c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length ever become the laughing-stock of the world.
— Henry David Thoreau, Slavery in Massachusetts
If justice fails in the courtroom, it will not prevail in society.A broken Justice System does not protect the rights of all people.
— Ellen J. Barrier
Is his work vengeance? Or Justice? There is the finest line between the two and when i try to focus on it, it becomes less and less clear.
— Jodi Picoult, The Storyteller
There are doubtless those who would wish to lock up all those who suspected of terrorist and other serious offences and, in the time-honored phrase, throw away the key. But a suspect is by definition a person whom no offence has been proved. Suspicions, even if reasonably entertained, may prove to be misplaced, as a series of tragic miscarriages of justice has demonstrated. Police officers and security officials can be wrong. It is a gross injustice to deprive of his liberty for significant periods a person who has committed no crime and does not intend to do so. No civilized country should willingly tolerate such injustices.
— Tom Bingham, The Rule of Law
First, it is a commitment to particularism, to giving priority to the specificity of particulars, not to abstractions and generalities that divert our attention away from concrete realities. Idealizations tend to be partial and distorting, obscuring the heterogeneity and complexity of actual experiences and concrete practices, which is why they do not provide an adequate standpoint for the diagnosis of social problems and injustices.
— José Medina, The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations
The issue, perhaps, boils down to one of how perceptions or misperceptions of racial difference impact various individuals’, or groups of individuals’, experience of freedom in America. Some would argue that it goes beyond hampering their 'pursuit of happiness' to outright obliterating it.
— Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.
Is it necessary that Heaven should borrow its light from the glare of Hell? Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty, endless injustice, immortal meanness. To worship an eternal gaoler hardens, debases, and pollutes even the vilest soul. While there is one sad and breaking heart in the universe, no good being can be perfectly happy.
— Robert G. Ingersoll
Don't you believe that the punishment should fit the crime? Isn't that what justice is? Letely, though, I wonder if we've gotten more into vengenance than justice.
— Whoopi Goldberg
When you smile, I become unconscious and I cannot open my eyes. Where is the justice!
— M.F. Moonzajer, A moment with God ; Poetry
So, was the crime lab a reward for almost being killed?''No, it was a reward for not being Bryce,
— Beverly Connor, Scattered Graves
It’s called being in love. It’s more frightening than confronting your deepest fear and opens you to being hurt beyond the physical plane.” He placed a hand over his heart. “It might seem as though it’s a weakness to you but it is proof that we are more than numbers, experiments, or whatever else Mercile intended us to be. It takes bravery and strength to feel such strong emotions for one person when we were denied from birth the chance to ever care about anything or anyone. I’m not saying it’s easy or painless. It is probably one of the most complex things I’ve experienced. Jessie is my life. My heart beats for her and I will admit to all that I wouldn’t want to go on if I lost her. The unmated ones don’t understand and are currently looking confused or horrified. I’m hopeful they’ll know the ups and downs of falling in love one day. It’s a gift and a curse at times but everyone should experience it. It’s a part of life and we are survivors.
— Laurann Dohner, Moon
I am the god of dreams, but not even I would dream of speaking for Hades,” Morpheus replied with a mischievous look in his eyes. “But if I had to guess, I would say it’s because he knows how destructive his little brother is. Hades, unlike most of the other gods, cares for mortals and doesn’t want to see them at war. Probably because he has to tend their souls when they die. He has had to judge millions of souls and that has given him a strong sense of justice. Leaving you to fight Zeus with no training is something he would consider unjust.
— Josephine Angelini, Goddess
The primitive idea of justice is partly legalized revenge and partly expiation by sacrifice. It works out from both sides in the notion that two blacks make a white, and that when a wrong has been done, it should be paid for by an equivalent suffering. It seems to the Philistine majority a matter of course that this compensating suffering should be inflicted on the wrongdoer for the sake of its deterrent effect on other would-be wrongdoers; but a moment's reflection will shew that this utilitarian application corrupts the whole transaction. For example, the shedding of blood cannot be balanced by the shedding of guilty blood. Sacrificing a criminal to propitiate God for the murder of one of his righteous servants is like sacrificing a mangy sheep or an ox with the rinderpest: it calls down divine wrath instead of appeasing it. In doing it we offer God as a sacrifice the gratification of our own revenge and the protection of our own lives without cost to ourselves; and cost to ourselves is the essence of sacrifice and expiation.
— George Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion
He(Prophet Muhammad) laid the foundation of a universal government. His law was one for all. Equal justice and love for everyone.
— B. Margoliouth
If you tell me the truth, the truth I’ll proclaim.If you tell me a lie, you’ll be fair game.
— Belva Rae Staples
High justice would in no way be debased if ardent love should cancel instantly the debts these penitents must satisfy.
— Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio
He was expressing his certainty that my appeal would be granted, but I was carrying the burden of a sin from which I had to free myself. According to him, human justice was nothing and divine justice was everything. I pointed out it was the former that had condemned me.
— Albert Camus, The Stranger
One must always be prepared to switch sides with justice, that fugitive of the winning camp.
— Simone Weil
As he himself said, "I will prove it to you, gentlemen, and i will prove it in two ways. First in the blinding clarity of the facts, and second, in the dim light cast by the mind of his criminal soul.
— Albert Camus, The Stranger
Leading a nation requires sacrifice
—  justice is the first one.
When you write about justice, you better forget who is going to be hurt.
— M.F. Moonzajer
If the spirit of their intercourse were still the same after their coming together as it had been when they were living apart,' Aristotle writes, their association can't really be considered a polis, or political community.'A polis is not an association for residence on a common site, or for the sake of preventing mutual injustice and easing exchange.' While these conditions are necessary to a polis, they are not sufficient. 'The end and purpose of a polis is the good life, and the institutions of social life are means to that end.
— Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?
Thankfully, God has shown us that hope, in its million different forms, always springs from three primary colors: justice, mercy, and love.
— Richard Dahlstrom, The Colors of Hope: Becoming People of Mercy, Justice, and Love
We are always in a constant state of conspiracies, at least thats what they keep telling us...
— Faith Brashear
Liberty is the act of making the Government Fear what you KNOW!
— Faith Brashear
I wont take no for an answer. I will use this to bind you to my bed until you change your mind if you dont answer the way I want you to. Will you marry me?"She grinned. "I dont know." Her attention fixed on the tie for a few seconds before she met his gaze again. "I might be tempted to say no just to get you to tie me to your bed.
— Laurann Dohner, Justice
He had tenderness in his heart — ‘a soft place,’ as Nicholas Higgins called it; but he had some pride in concealing it; he kept it very sacred and safe, and was jealous of every circumstance that tried to gain admission. But if he dreaded exposure of his tenderness, he was equally desirous that all men should recognize his justice; and he felt that he had been unjust, in giving so scornful a hearing to anyone who had waited, with humble patience, for five hours, to speak to him.
— Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
Disgust with injustice may sharpen the desire for justice. Readers who don’t see this connection merely wish to be entertained, and I have neither skill nor desire to turn the agony of a people into entertainment.
— Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
There is no reason to think a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens cannot change the world; Indeed, that's the only thing that ever has.
— Margaret Mead
If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them.
— Paul Wellstone
When we try to control, we become controlled; when we release, we become free.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
It is not unpatriotic to acknowledge America’s faults. No country is perfect… We can’t reach the top of the mountain if we don’t fix the injustice and confront our lies. 
— Keith Ellison, My Country 'Tis of Thee
All ideas in a truly free society should always be open for discussion.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
Prejudice comes from insecurity and its spiritually infantile need of belonging.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
We could have touched the stars. Instead, you brought them to us. We didn't have to seek the heavens when we had you here with us now.
— Jim Krueger, Justice, Volume 1
Many an injustice is presented as solution and gift.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
God may seem sometimes to forget for a while, whilst his justice reposes, but there always comes a moment when he remembers.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Lem glowered. "Your lion friends ride into some village, take all the food and every coin they find, and call it foraging. the wolves as well, so why not us? no one robbed you, dog. You just been good and foraged.
— George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
If there is no justice in a country, who can claim that, that country is a country? An injustice country is just a rubbish bin!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
The pain of humanity's most maltreated victims echoes deep within each of us, in the form of our shame or ignorance.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
Duty comes in many forms; at times duty to country may conflict with duty to family. Yet, with a lucid mind the guises can be torn away and in the end, duty becomes but one, and that duty is to value justice above everything--to do what is right not because someone ordains it, but because the heart which is the seat of truth decrees it so.
— F. Sionil José, Dusk
What I have told you is not completely true. You should beware, for often in this story, my words will be spoken out of bitterness, out of hate. The scream of the poor is not always just; but if you do not listen to it, then you will never understand justice.
— Erik Christian Haugaard, The Little Fishes
We find ourselves constantly in battle in the vast human theaters of conflict.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
Whatever they have done, or are doing, or will do to the people locked away forever in Guantanamo Bay, they will do the same to the people in Harlem and the people in Los Angeles and the people in Texas and the people in Washington and the people in Florida and of course to the people in Alabama and the people in South Carolina........
— Banole
There is no justice here
—  there is no justice there
It is a world," he said, "filled with the mysterious joinder of accident!""It is a world," replied Abner, "filled with the mysterious justice of God!
— Melville Davisson Post, Uncle Abner: The Doomdorf Mystery
I have lived through an eventful year, yet understand no more of it than a babe in arms. Of all the people of this town I am the one least fitted to write a memorial. Better the blacksmith with his cries of rage and woe.
— J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
Faith without reason produces a mindless Christianity which is less than useless; the focus on justice in this world produces a theology that chases its own tail."~R. Alan Woods [2013]
— R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries
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.
— Agatha Christie
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
— Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
Live out your life in truth and justice, tolerant of those who are neither true nor just.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
God is merciful to all, as he has been to you; he is first a father, then a judge.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.
— Isaac Bashevis Singer
Issues are like tissues. You pull one out and another appears!
— Gary  Goldstein, Jew in Jail
The way to find justice is to deal fairly with other people and not worry about how they deal with you.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy
For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk.
— Jürgen Habermas
The true champion of justice, if he intends to survive even for a short time, must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone.
— Socrates, Apology
Because things are not agreeable," said Jean Valjean, "that is no reason for being unjust towards God.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
The world is full of injustice, and those who profit by injustice are in a position to administer rewards and punishments. The rewards go to those who invent ingenious justifications for inequality, the punishments to those who try to remedy it.
— Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays
Race relations never improve in war time; they always worsen. And it is when the boys come home the Ku Klux Klans are organized. I believe with George Schuyler that the only really feasible way to improve the general situation of the American Negro is to convince more and more whites that he is, as men go in this world, a decent fellow, and that amicable living with him is not only possible but desirable. Every threat of mass political pressure, every appeal to political mountebanks, only alarms the white brother, and so postpones the day of reasonable justice.
— H.L. Mencken
It’s every man’s business to see justice done.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Justice without mercy is tyranny
— E'Jéi Osborne
The only way to rise above is to rise above. The only way to respond to wrong is with right. The only way to deal with injustice is to be just.
— Nafisa Haji, The Sweetness of Tears
How a member of the church—one who had read the Good Lord’s bible—could sit so calmly and watch a man be led to his destruction frightened me.
— Jay Grewal, A Slave to Want
When searching for justice, what you sometimes find is just more trouble.
— Maryann Austin
Justice is a social construct. It’s well known that the physical universe isn’t fair. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to decide which is more provoking: good people suffering or evil people prospering.
— Susan  Cartwright, Wolf Dawn
I have the documents. Documents, proof, evidence, photograph, signature. One day you raise your right hand and you are American. They give you an American Pass port. The United States of America. Somewhere someone has taken my identity and replaced it with their photograph. The other one. Their signature their seals. Their own image. And you learn the executive branch the legislative branch and the third. Justice. Judicial branch. It makes the difference The rest is past.
— Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee
People who believe that justice is a pendulum are willing to swing it wildly.
— George Hammond
Laws on killing, even God's demands, didn't allow for peace. Not always. There'd still be pain; missing that child would break her parents' hearts. But what Helen knew, what she'd seen in those woods, would be too much for them, for everybody.
— Alan Heathcock, Volt
And it's wrong of you to think that love leaves room for nothing else. It's possible to love something and still condescend to it.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun
The Indian criminal justice system was a market like garbage, Abdul now understood. Innocence and guilt could be bought and sold like a kilo of polyurethane bags.
— Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
It was a cruel fate, Yet not so cruel as Mago's will be. I promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and the horse god and every god that lives. I swear by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them, Mago and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed Eroeh.
— George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
The sense of justice is continuous with the love of mankind.
— John Rawls
Injustice is relatively easy to bear
—  what stings is justice.
For indeed, grace is the key to it all. It is not our lavish good deeds that procure salvation, but God's lavish love and mercy. That is why the poor are as acceptable before God as the rich. It is the generosity of God, the freeness of his salvation, that lays the foundation for the society of justice for all. Even in the seemingly boring rules and regulations of tabernacle rituals, we see that God cares about the poor, that his laws make provision for the disadvantaged. God's concern for justice permeated every part of Israel's life. It should also permeate our lives.
— Timothy J. Keller, Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes Us Just
They only asked for punishments that fitted their crimes. Not ones that came like cupboards with built-in bedrooms. Not ones you spent your whole life in, wandering through its maze of shelves.
— Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.
— Gregory David Roberts
What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
— Adrian Rogers
Your edict, King, was strong,But all your strength is weakness itself againstThe immortal unrecorded laws of God.They are not merely now: they were, and shall be,Operative for ever, beyond man utterly.I knew I must die, even without your decree:I am only mortal. And if I must dieNow, before it is my time to die,Surely this is no hardship: can anyoneLiving, as I live, with evil all about me,Think Death less than a friend?
— Sophocles, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex/Oedipus at Colonus/Antigone
Justice in a fallen world is not equality of outcome but equal treatment under a fair law.
— Kevin DeYoung, What is the Mission of the Church?: Making sense of social justice, Shalom and the Great Commission
This reasonable moderator, and equal piece of justice, Death.
— Thomas Browne
In the Carolinas they say "hill people" are different from "flatlands people," and as a native Kentuckian with more mountain than flatlands blood, I'm inclined to agree. This was one of the theories I'd been nursing all the way from San Francisco. Unlike Porterville or Hollister, Bass Lake was a mountain community ... and if the old Appalachian pattern held, the people would be much slower to anger or panic, but absolutely without reason or mercy once the fat was in the fire. Like the Angels, they would tend to fall back in an emergency on their own native sense of justice -- which bears only a primitive resemblance to anything written in law books. I thought the mountain types would be far more tolerant of the Angels' noisy showboating, but -- compared to their flatlands cousins -- much quicker to retaliate in kind at the first evidence of physical insult or abuse.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
Calamity with us, is made an excuse for doing wrong. With them, it is erected into a reason for their doing right. This is really the justice of rich to poor, and I protest against it because it is so.
— Charles Dickens
I care not for the body which may rot. Yet, for the transgression of the spirit, of moral ethics, of life, liberty and the soul itself, I must and shall cross the line of battle or lose the very reason not to.
— The Great Pacifist
the Reagan years "produced one of the most dramatic redistributions of income in the nation's history....The income of families in the bottom decile fell by 10.4 percent...while the income of those in the top one percent rose by 87.1 percent."Chain Reaction, 23
— Thomas B. Edsall
Justice is rendering each killer that which is his due.
— Mark M. DeRobertis, Killer of Killers
True peace required the presence of justice, not just the absence of conflict.
— N.K. Jemisin, The Killing Moon
Justice isn’t about fixing the past
—  it’s about healing the past's future.
If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents?
— Michael Connelly, The Concrete Blonde
THERE IS NO JUSTICE" said Death "JUST ME
— Terry Pratchett
Justice came from a fight amid complexities, and required all the virtues in the world merely to be perceived.
— Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale
For a successful revolution it is not enough that there is discontent. What is required is a profound and thorough conviction of the justice, necessity and importance of political and social rights.
— B.R. Ambedkar
Freedom is not an abstaction, nor is a little of it enough. A little more is not enough either. Having less, being less, empoverished in freedom and rights, women then invariably have less self-respect: less self-respect than any human being needs to live a brave and honest life.
— Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse
If a theory of justice is to guide reasoned choice of policies, strategies or institutions, then the identification of fully just social arrangements is neither necessary nor sufficient.
— Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice
Sometimes evil wins, nah, child. But it’s always fleeting. Just a temporary ripple in a sea of goodness, brought on by the carnal nature of greed ’n corruption. Sacrifice washes that ripple out in waves of love ’n light, and peace is found when justice is served, even for those who lose, ya hear?
— Rachael Wade, The Tragedy of Knowledge
Justice is a machine that, when someone has once given it the starting push, rolls on of itself. - John Galsworthy, Justice [1910], act II
— John Galsworthy
In the old Republican days the subject of slavery and of the saving of the Union made appeals to the consciences and liberty-loving instincts of the people. These later years have been full of talk about commerce and dinner pails, but I feel sure that the American conscience and the American love of liberty have not been smothered. They will break through this crust of sordidness and realize that those only keep their liberties who accord liberty to others.
— Benjamin Harrison
Are women human yet? If women were human, would we be a cash crop shipped from Thailand in containers into New York's brothels...? Would our genitals be sliced out to "cleanse" us...? When will women be human? When? ~ Half The Sky
— Catherine Mackinnon
Remember, what goes around comes around, if you give out venom, sooner or later it will come back to poison you
— TheEmoQueen
Perhaps pondering words is also a form of seeking justice. If a monologue can invite a chorus, then perhaps it can speak for others as well.
— Duo Duo
King- Hamilton, Judge Alan ( b 1900 )'...I think he erred on the side of severity when he gave Janie Jones, the notorious madame, seven years after the jury had acquitted her'. 'Well, these things are relative of course. It all depends on what you've been acquitted of. Miss Jones was innocent of a very serious offence.
— William Donaldson
Justice can readily do her job blindfolded; she cannot function gagged and deafened, least of all when the means of gagging and deafening her are not remarked.
— Markham Shaw Pyle
Bfore Venus, censorious; before Mars, timid.
— Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations
Before Venus, censorious; before Mars, timid.
— Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations
You are not a mistake. You are not a problem to be solved. But you won't discover this until you are willing to stop banging your head against the wall of shaming and caging and fearing yourself. (p. 84)
— Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
When you believe without knowing you believe that you are damaged at your core, you also believe that you need to hide that damage for anyone to love you. You walk around ashamed of being yourself. You try hard to make up for the way you look, walk, feel. Decisions are agonizing because if you, the person who makes the decision, is damaged, then how can you trust what you decide? You doubt your own impulses so you become masterful at looking outside yourself for comfort. You become an expert at finding experts and programs, at striving and trying hard and then harder to change yourself, but this process only reaffirms what you already believe about yourself -- that your needs and choices cannot be trusted, and left to your own devices you are out of control (p.82-83)
— Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
. . . hell is wanting to be somewhere different from where you are. Being one place and wanting to be somewhere else . . . . Wanting life to be different from what it is. That's also called leaving without leaving. Dying before you die. It's as if there is a part of you that so rails against being shattered by love that you shatter yourself first. (p. 44)
— Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages.
— Louis Pasteur
If we are creating ourselves all the time, then it is never too late to begin creating the bodies we want instead of the ones we mistakenly assume we are stuck with.
— Deepak Chopra
An over-indulgence of anything, even something as pure as water, can intoxicate.
— Criss Jami, Venus in Arms
Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
I always take Scotch whiskey at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it.
— Mark Twain
The First wealth is health.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
I run because if I didn’t, I’d be sluggish and glum and spend too much time on the couch. I run to breathe the fresh air. I run to explore. I run to escape the ordinary. I run…to savor the trip along the way. Life becomes a little more vibrant, a little more intense. I like that.
— Dean Karnazes, Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner
When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.
— Herophilus
Freedom from obsession is not about something you do
—  it's about knowing who you are. It's about recognizing what sustains you and what exhausts you. What you love and what you think you love because you believe you can't have it. (p. 163)
Respect your body. Eat well. Dance forever.
— Eliza Gaynor Minden
It's a pretty amazing to wake up every morning, knowing that every decision I make is to cause as little harm as possible. It's a pretty fantastic way to live.
— Colleen Patrick-Goudreau
...compulsive eating is basically a refusal to be fully alive. No matter what we weigh, those of us who are compulsive eaters have anorexia of the soul. We refuse to take in what sustains us. We live lives of deprivation. And when we can't stand it any longer, we binge. The way we are able to accomplish all of this is by the simple act of bolting -- of leaving ourselves -- hundreds of times a day.
— Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.
— Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness
It's never been true, not anywhere at any time, that the value of a soul, of a human spirit, is dependent on a number on a scale. We are unrepeatable beings of light and space and water who need these physical vehicles to get around. When we start defining ourselves by that which can be measured or weighed, something deep within us rebels. We don't want to EAT hot fudge sundaes as much as we want our lives to BE hot fudge sundaes. We want to come home to ourselves. (p. 174-5)
— Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
True discipline is really just self-remembering
—  no forcing or fighting is necessary.
No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other means.
— Maimonides
The best six doctors anywhereAnd no one can deny itAre sunshine, water, rest, and airExercise and diet.These six will gladly you attendIf only you are willingYour mind they'll easeYour will they'll mendAnd charge you not a shilling.”-- Nursery rhyme quoted by Wayne Fields, What the River Knows, 1990
— Wayne Fields
I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on cholesterol lowering drugs for the rest of their lives.
— Dean Ornish
I believe that the community - in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures - is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms. (pg. 146, Health is Membership)
— Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
Eating crappy food isn't a reward -- it's a punishment.
— Drew Carey
Weight (too much or too little) is a by-product. Weight is what happens when you use food to flatten your life. Even with aching joints, it's not about food. Even with arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure. It's about your desire to flatten your life. It's about the fact that you've given up without saying so. It's about your belief that it's not possible to live any other way -- and you're using food to act that out without ever having to admit it. (p. 53)
— Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
It is important to keep in mind that our bodies must work pretty well, or their wouldn't be so many humans on the planet.
— Ina May Gaskin, Ina May's Guide to Childbirth
Getting fit is all about mind over matter. I don't mind, so it doesn't matter.
— Adam Hargreaves, Mr. Lazy's Guide to Fitness
Our work is not to change what you do, but to witness what you do with enough awareness, enough curiosity, enough tenderness that the lies and old decisions upon which the compulsion is based become apparent and fall away. When you no longer believe that eating will save your life when you feel exhausted or overwhelmed or lonely, you will stop. When you believe in yourself more than you believe in food, you will stop using food as if it were your only chance at not falling apart. When the shape of your body no longer matches the shape of your beliefs, the weight disappears. (p. 80-81)
— Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
May you be ordinary, as the poet once wished the new-born baby.
— Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
Regaining health is more difficult an objective then becoming ill. Becoming ill is a random act of ignorance and regaining health is an intentional effort in frustration.
— Richard Diaz
Save the Planet...Buy Organic
— Nancy Philips
Health isn’t about being “perfect” with food or exercise or herbs. Health is about balancing those things with your desires. It’s about nourishing your spirit as well as your body.
— Golda Poretsky
I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced, vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open.
— Dean Ornish
...A person who is headstrong enough to open their eyes and their heart to the full depth and weight of the world is inviting in everything out there - both evil and good, both dark and light, and the sheer bravery of that openness enables them to gain profound insight into the human condition. It also fucks them up. It may even make them more prone to stick their head in an oven than to engage in self-promotional chitchat on Jay Leno.
— Patricia Pearson
We cut the throat of a calf and hang it up by the heels to bleed to death so that our veal cutlet may be white
—  we nail geese to a board and cram them with food because we like the taste of liver disease
These people go on to tell us that mobile phones will cook our children’s ears, that long-haul flights will fill our legs with thrombosis and that meat is murder. They want an end to all deaths – and it doesn’t stop there. They don’t even see why anyone should have to suffer from a spot of light bruising. Every week, as we filmed my television chat show, food would be spilt on the floor, and every week the recording would have to be stopped so it could be swept away. ‘What would happen,’ said the man from health and safety, ‘if a cameraman were to slip over?’ ‘Well,’ I would reply, ‘he’d probably have to stand up again.
— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson
When you got a condition, it's bad to forget your medicine.
— Frank Miller, Sin City, Vol. 1: The Hard Goodbye
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing...
— Redd Foxx
You will know if you are too acidic if you get sick often, get urinary tract infections, suffer from headaches, and have bad breath and body odor (when you do not use antiperspirant). Acidosis is the medical term for a blood alkalinity of less than 7.35. A normal reading is called homeostasis. It is not considered a disease; although in and of itself it is recognized as an indicator of disease. Your blood feeds your organs and tissues; so if your blood is acidic, your organs will suffer and your body will have to compensate for this imbalance somehow. We need to do all we can to keep our blood alkalinity high. The way to do this is to dramatically increase our intake of alkaline-rich elements like fresh, clean air; fresh, clean water; raw vegetables (particularly their juices); and sunlight, while drastically reducing our intake of and exposure to acid-forming substances: pollution, cigarettes, hard alcohol, white flour, white sugar, red meat, and coffee. By tipping the scales in the direction of alkalinity through alkaline diet and removal of acid waste through cleansing, and acidic body can become an alkaline one."Bear in mind that some substances that are alkaline outside the body, like milk, are acidic to the body; meaning that they leave and acid reside in the tissues, just as many substances that are acidic outside the body, like lemons and ripe tomatoes, are alkaline and healing in the body and contribute to the body's critical alkaline reserve.
— Natalia Rose, Detox for Women: An All New Approach for a Sleek Body and Radiant Health in 4 Weeks
Man is more miserable, more restless and unsatisfied than ever before, simply because half his nature--the spiritual--is starving for true food, and the other half--the material--is fed with bad food.
— Paul Brunton
In a massive, long-term study of 17,000 civil servants, an almost unbelievable conclusion emerged: the status of a person's job was more likely to predict their likelihood of a heart attack than obesity, smoking or high blood pressure.
— Matt Ridley, Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters
When you feel yourself to be in critical condition, you must treat yourself as gently as you would a sick friend.
— Julia Cameron, Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance
The best diet is the one you don't know you're on.
— Brian Wansink, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think
The concept of disease is fast replacing the concept of responsibility. With increasing zeal Americans use and interpret the assertion "I am sick" as equivalent to the assertion "I am not responsible": Smokers say they are not responsible for smoking, drinkers that they are not responsible for drinking, gamblers that they are not responsible for gambling, and mothers who murder their infants that they are not responsible for killing. To prove their point — and to capitalize on their self-destructive and destructive behavior — smokers, drinkers, gamblers, and insanity acquitees are suing tobacco companies, liquor companies, gambling casinos, and physicians.
— Thomas Szasz
We can, and must, develop dialogue and relatedness with our body because it’s talking to us all the time. And please remember, your body loves you. It does everything it can to keep you alive and functioning. You can feed it garbage, and it will take it and digest it for you. You can deprive it of sleep, but still it gets you up and running next morning. You can drink too much alcohol, and it will eliminate it from your system. It loves you unconditionally and does its best to allow you to live the life you came here for. The real issue in this relationship is not whether your body loves you, but whether you love your body. In any relationship, if one partner is loving, faithful and supportive, it’s easy for the other to take that person for granted. That’s what most of us do with our bodies. It is time for you to shift this, and working to understand your cravings is one of the best places to begin. Then you can build a mutually loving relationship with your own body.
— Joshua Rosenthal, Integrative Nutrition: Feed Your Hunger for Health and Happiness
Bear in mind that since medications do not fix anything, they allow the underlying problem to continue uncorrected and actually accelerate. Meanwhile, new symptoms and new seemingly unrelated diseases are the inevitable consequence of this biochemical faux pas. Furthermore, drug side effects are the leading cause of death. NSAIDs as an example of only one group of medications, are fatally toxic to thousands of people each year by damaging joints, lungs, kidneys, eyes, hearts, and intestines. And they are covered by insurance. You and your doctor have been screwed into believing every symptom is a deficiency of some drug or surgery. You've been led to believe you have no control, when in truth you're the one who must take control. Unfortunately, the modus operandi in medicine is to find a drug to turn off the damaged part that is producing symptoms.
— Sherry A. Rogers, Detoxify or Die
When I came out of anesthesia, I wanted two things: my husband and my dog. They wouldn't let the dog in the recovery room.
— Sandy Nathan, Numenon
Before asserting a prognosis on any patient, always be objective and never subjective. For telling a man that he will win the treasure of life, but then later discovering that he will lose, will harm him more than by telling him that he may lose, but then he wins.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Most people throughout the world, not just inNewport Beach, care more about their faces, their boobs, their bellies, their butts, andtheir abs than they do their brains. But it is your brain that is the key to having the face,the breasts, the belly, the butt, the abs, and the overall health you have always wanted;and it is brain dysfunction, in large part, that ruins our bodies and causes prematureaging.
— Daniel G. Amen, Change Your Brain, Change Your Body: Use Your Brain to Get and Keep the Body You Have Always Wanted
Capitalism is a social system owned by the capitalistic class, a small network of very wealthy and powerful businessmen, who compromise the health and security of the general population for corporate gain.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
That’s the point. This healthy-feeling time now just feels like a tease. Like I’m in this holding pattern, flying in smooth circles within sight of the airport, in super-comfortable first class. But I can’t enjoy the in-flight movie or free chocolate chip cookies because I know that before the airport is able to make room for us, the plane is going to run out of fuel, and we’re going to crash-land into a fiery, agonizing death.
— Jessica Verdi, My Life After Now
It is hard to talk about a middle ground for something that is a fundamental right.
— Teri Reynolds, The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad
If you walked into your local convenience store and bought a package of cigars, you would notice that it carries a label warning of the potential dangers of cigar smoke. Yet research suggests that cigar smoking poses a hazard only to moderate to heavy cigar smokers, who comprise less than 1 percent of the adult population. More than 97 percent of American adults, however, eat animal foods, and despite much research demonstrating the connection between the consumption of animal products and disease, we are not warned of these dangers.
— Melanie Joy, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism: The Belief System That Enables Us to Eat Some Animals and Not Others
And dieting, I discovered, was another form of disordered eating, just as anorexia and bulimia similarly disrupt the natural order of eating. "Ordered" eating is the practice of eating when you are hungry and ceasing to eat when your brain sends the signal that your stomach is full. ... All people who live their lives on a diet are suffering. If you can accept your natural body weight and not force it to beneath your body's natural, healthy weight, then you can live your life free of dieting, of restriction, of feeling guilty every time you eat a slice of your kid's birthday cake.
— Portia de Rossi, Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain
It is your brain that decides to get you out of bed in the morning to exercise, togive you a stronger, leaner body, or to cause you to hit the snooze button andprocrastinate your workout. It is your brain that pushes you away from the table tellingyou that you have had enough, or that gives you permission to have the second bowl ofRocky Road ice cream, making you look and feel like a blob. It is your brain thatmanages the stress in your life and relaxes you so that you look vibrant, or, when leftunchecked, sends stress signals to the rest of your body and wrinkles your skin. And it isyour brain that turns away cigarettes, too much caffeine, and alcohol, helping you lookand feel healthy, or that gives you permission to smoke, to have that third cup of coffee,or to drink that third glass of wine, thus making every system in your body look and feelolder.Your brain is the command and control center of your body. If you want a betterbody, the first place to ALWAYS start is by having a better brain.
— Daniel G. Amen, Change Your Brain, Change Your Body: Use Your Brain to Get and Keep the Body You Have Always Wanted
The corn is planted first, followed by beans, then squash between the rows.They are called the Three Sisters. They sustain each other, the earth, and us. But the Big Ones do not know that. They do not care for the earth, and its children, properly.
— Elizabeth Haydon, The Dragon's Lair
The skin is an integral part of the body and depends upon the general system for its supply of food and to carry away its waste. Skin health depends primarily upon the general health of the body. All attempts to deal with the skin as an independent entity, without due regard to its reliance upon the general system, must of necessity result in failure. The skin is nourished by the blood and there is no other source from which it can draw sustenance. "Skin foods" are all frauds. These are composed chiefly of grease. No fat can be assimilated by the skin or other tissues of the body until it has first been broken down into its constituent fatty acids in the process of digestion. Even were this not true, the skin contains very little fat and these "skin foods" would still not constitute proper nourishment for it. Blood is the only skin food.
— Herbert M. Shelton, The Science and Fine Art of Natural Hygiene
To be physically astute and psychologically tended, yet morally insulated and conceptually blind--is to be crazy, not healthy.
— Michael Ventura, Letters at 3am
Talking about unpleasant things during a meal is not good for digestion, not good for health.
— Betty Jamie Chung
The most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.
— G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
It was 1976.It was one of the darkest days of my life when that nurse, Mrs. Shimmer, pulled out a maxi pad that measured the width and depth of a mattress and showed us how to use it. It had a belt with it that looked like a slingshot that possessed the jaw-dropping potential to pop a man's head like a gourd. As she stretched the belt between the fingers of her two hands, Mrs. Shimmer told us becoming a woman was a magical and beautiful experience.I remember thinking to myself, You're damn right it had better be magic, because that's what it's going to take to get me to wear something like that, Tinkerbell! It looked like a saddle. Weighed as much as one, too. Some girls even cried.I didn't.I raised my hand."Mrs. Shimmer," I asked the cautiously, "so what kind of security napkins do boys wear when their flower pollinates? Does it have a belt, too?"The room got quiet except for a bubbling round of giggles."You haven't been paying attention, have you?" Mrs. Shimmer accused sharply. "Boys have stamens, and stamens do not require sanitary napkins. They require self control, but you'll learn that soon enough."I was certainly hoping my naughty bits (what Mrs. Shimmer explained to us was like the pistil of a flower) didn't get out of control, because I had no idea what to do if they did.
— Laurie Notaro, The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club: True Tales from a Magnificent and Clumsy Life
Seeing modern health care from the other side, I can say that it is clearly not set up for the patient. It is frequently a poor arrangement for doctors as well, but that does not mitigate how little the system accounts for the patient's best interest. Just when you are at your weakest and least able to make all the phone calls, traverse the maze of insurance, and plead for health-care referrals is that one time when you have to  your life may depend on it.
— Ross I. Donaldson, The Lassa Ward: One Man's Fight Against One of the World's Deadliest Diseases
Personal finances are like people’s personal health, crucial and tragic to the sufferer but tedious to the listener. 
— Thomas Keneally, Searching for Schindler: A Memoir
If there had been an exercise I'd liked, would I have gotten this big in the first place?
— Jennifer Weiner