Theodore Parker

Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete …

The people are not satisfied with any form of government, or statute law, until it comes up to their sense of justice; so every progressive State revises its statutes from time to time, and at each revision comes nearer to the absolute …

I love justice, not for its consequences for bodily gain, but for itself, for the moral truth and loveliness thereof.

Man naturally loves justice, for its own sake, as the natural object of his conscience. As the mind loves truth and beauty, so conscience loves the right; it is true and beautiful to the moral faculties.

I am to do justice, and demand that of all, — a universal human debt, a universal human claim.

Justice is moral temperance in the world of men. It keeps just relations between men; one man, however little, must not be sacrificed to another, however great, to a majority, or to all men.

Observation and reflection only give us the actual of morals; conscience, by gradual and successive intuition, presents us the ideal of morals.

The facts of man's history do not fully represent the faculties of his nature as the history of matter represents the qualities of matter.

Justice is the constitution or fundamental law of the moral universe, the law of right, a rule of conduct for man in all his moral relations.

Wealth and want equally harden the human heart, like frost and fire both are alien to human flesh. Famine and gluttony alike drive nature away from the heart of man.

It is very sad for a man to make himself servant to a single thing; his manhood all taken out of him by the hydraulic pressure of excessive business. — I should not like to be merely a great doctor, a great lawyer, a great minister, a …

This idea demands, as the proximate organization thereof, a democracy, that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government after the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of …

There is what I call the American idea.

Remorse is the pain of sin.

Every rose is an autograph from the hand of the Almighty God. On this world about us He has inscribed His thought, in these marvelous hieroglyphics which sense and science have been these many thousand years seeking to understand. The …

Eternity is the life-time of Truth.

If it shall ever be so, still the great ideas which I have set forth, of man, of God, of religion, — they will endure, and one day will be "a flame in the heart of all mankind."

If you lend me your ears, I shall doubtless take your hearts too. That I may not lead you into any wrong, let me warn you of this. Never violate the sacredness of your individual self-respect. Be true to your own mind and conscience, your …

All men desire to be immortal.

Truth stood on one side and Ease on the other; it has often been so.

Truth never yet fell dead in the streets; it has such affinity with the soul of man, the seed however broadcast will catch somewhere and produce its hundredfold.

The world has grown rich and refined, but chiefly by the efforts of those who themselves continue poor and ignorant.

The world no doubt grows better; comfort is increased from age to age.