Too much mercy... often resulted in further crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice had been put first and mercy second.
Laws, when good, should be supreme; and that the magistrate or magistrates should regulate those matters only on which the laws are unable to speak with precision owing to the difficulty of any general principle embracing all particulars.
If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice.
He only has freedom who ideally loves freedom himself and is glad to extend it to others. He who cares to have slaves must chain himself to them. He who builds walls to create exclusion for others builds walls across his own freedom. He who distrusts freedom in others loses his moral right to it.
If God had wanted to become an object of love, he would first of all have had to forgo judging and justice : a judge, and even a gracious judge, is no object of love.
We feel something, and reach out for the nearest phrase or hum with which to communicate, but which fails to do justice to what has induced us to do so....We stay on the outside of our impressions, as if staring at them through a frosted window, superficially related to them, yet estranged from whatever has eluded casual definition.
God is not on the side of any nation, yet we know He is on the side of justice... Our finest moments have come when we faithfully served the cause of justice for our own citizens, and for the people of other lands.