Justice
That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.
poem by Langston Hughes
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Related quotes
Should Justice Be Blind?
JUSTICE: SIGHTED OR BLINDED?
"Don't take a bribe, " the Bible says, "because they blind
those who are instructed to administer
justice." Those depicting justice often bind
the Lady's eyes. This act appears quite sinister
to Torah's jurisprudence. Doing this might steer
your judgment to the left or right, and make you look
with a vision that's obscured, and raise the fear
that you might violate the laws within the Book.
The artists thought impartiality and sight
to be in conflict: that is why they blinded Justice.
Bible law prioritizes vision: what is right
should never be the least obscured. Renaissance trust is
based on impartiality, whereas clear vision
is in the Torah's point of view the major given.
A judge must use his sight, and make no blind decision:
all biases caused by his sight must be forgiven.
The verses that I cite at the beginning of this poem are in Exod.23: 8 and Deut.16: 19
Randy Kennedy ("Two Legal Scholars Trace a Symbol Through the Ages, " NYT,12/16/10) writes:
In ancient Egypt she was known as Maat, the goddess of harmony and order, depicted in the Book of the Dead as a kind of personified jeweler's scale, weighing a human heart against a feather to determine a soul's fate in the afterlife.In Greece she became Themis, aunt, wife and counselor to Zeus, and the Romans then rolled her and her daughter Dike together to form Justitia, the only one of the cardinal virtues to have a signature look in ancient art. But the look of the grande dame we have come to know as Lady Justice — as interpreted by artists like Giotto, Brueghel and Reynolds — has been as changeable as a catwalk model's.
She has strode forth naked and clothed, shoeless and shod, sword wielding and weaponless. She has been accompanied by a dog (for fidelity) , a snake (for hatred) and a whole menagerie of other sidekicks that would befuddle the modern courthouse visitor, including an ostrich, whose supposed ability to digest anything was seen by the ancients as a useful attribute for the machinery of justice.
As the Yale Law School professors Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis show in an unusual new book just out, "Representing Justice" — an academic treatise on threats to the modern judiciary that doubles as an obsessive's tour of Western art through the lens of the law — Lady Justice's familiar blindfold did not become an accessory until well into the 17th century. And even then it was uncommon because of the profoundly negative connotations blindfolds carried for medieval and Renaissance audiences, who viewed them as emblems not of impartiality but of deception (hence the early use of the word hoodwink as a noun, meaning a blindfold or hood) .
"Sight was the desired state, " Professors Resnik and Curtis write, "connected to insight, light and the rays of God's sun." Even in modern times the blindfold continues to fit uneasily in Lady Justice's wardrobe, used as a handy prop by political cartoonists and a symbol of dysfunction by others. "That Justice is a blind goddess/Is a thing to which we black are wise, " Langston Hughes wrote in 1923. "Her bandage hides two festering sores/ That once perhaps were eyes."
It might convey some idea of the depth of Ms. Resnik and Mr. Curtis's mutual interest in the art life of Lady Justice that their examination of the history of her blindfold alone takes up one whole chapter and part of another in the book, following ideas of sight and veiling through the philosophy of Locke, Diderot and Bentham.
5/29/12 #10351
poem by Gershon Hepner
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My Justice
'Justice is the one thing you should always find'**-
It needs find all who seek its aegis, e'en though it is blind;
Justice chooses one side, that of verity;
There exists no convolution, only a resplendent clarity
When true justice is rendered, to those in need
Of the curative powers that only it may heed;
Justice denied to one, is justice denied to all, the same-
To those responsible for its denial, goes all the shame!
Justice is not just a decision, its a means of thought-
For its very guard, many a war has been fought,
Many a man has given his very life, as would I-
And no man should be asked to live without it-nor should I;
My justice shan't come, until I may look them in the eyes, and say:
'Though I am not with you, I've kept you in my heart, and there you'll stay! '
poem by Maurice Harris
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In a neighborhood, as in life, a clean bandage is much, much better than a raw or festering wound.
quote by Edward Koch
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Housewife In Alexandria
A housewife in Alexandria.
The woman in Alexandria Egypt in her black chador
which mercifully hides a thin, body, lines up outside
a bakery she has walked six miles to buy bread for
the day. Her body could have fitted a Dior’s creation
snugly but as it is she has to haste home and feed
her children. She has been to the fruit market too
where rib cage showing mules with open sores wait,
their starvation have lasted so long that they are no
longer hungry but eat when fed. A rich woman, who
has never felt the pang of hunger, tells mule drivers
off for not taking care of their beasts and dispenses
salve on animals’ sores. The woman, with a model’s
body, is poor and blind to this, empathy with animals
are for the wealthy, those with time to care.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Cling To You
Confusion,
Rebuke,
Sudden ruin,
Wickedness,
To cling to you,
Entering to posses it,
Consumption,
Scorching heat,
Inflammation,
Mildew,
Powder and dust!
Upon you,
In one direction,
Like a spectacle! !
But, in seven directions;
Like the muse of love than hate!
But, you are now afflicted with the diseases of Egypt;
Festering sores,
Confusion of the mind,
Just as a blind person gropes in darkness!
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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Blind Justice...
When people say justice is blind...
are they using the figure of speef just because it sounds devine...
I think justice is actually blind...
because someone is being comitted of crime...
and the government won't give a homeless man a dime...
apples is in doggy jail for biting child...
why are the consequnces so dire...
my father, paying student lone for half his life...
because he had to provide for his kids and his wife...
my friends in school not doing so well...
because they dont have fathers...
probaly because they're in jail...
that just proves how so many black people live this way...
maybe theres other, latinos and such...
but not much of our government...
gives a f***...
as we can see, the world isnt kind...
but what we can see is that justice...
is blind...
while they kick us in our as****
sure would be nice if justice...
had glasses...
poem by Onyx Blake
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Justice should remove the bandage from her eyes long enough to distinguish between the vicious and the unfortunate.
quote by Robert Green Ingersoll
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Blindman's Buff
OH, my Theresa dear!
Thine eyes, I greatly fear,
Can through the bandage see!
Although thine eyes are bound,
By thee I'm quickly found,
And wherefore shouldst thou catch but me?
Ere long thou held'st me fast,
With arms around me cast,
Upon thy breast I fell;
Scarce was thy bandage gone,
When all my joy was flown,
Thou coldly didst the blind repel.
He groped on ev'ry side,
His limbs he sorely tried,
While scoffs arose all round;
If thou no love wilt give,
In sadness I shall live,
As if mine eyes remain'd still bound.
poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The Hidden Poem With In Us
Poetry hinds behind the very tears we shed
It hides in the very pain we feel
It hides deep inside our locked emotions
When you feel confused there a poem hiding with all the answers
Poetry hides in the shadows that follow you around
It hides in the mumbling sound of our depressed voices
it hides in the locked up anger we all have
Poetry hides in the voices in our mind that is put on mute
Poetry hides behind the secrete window in our minds we painted black
But the thing about poetry is that it seems to be playing a game of hide-and-seek
But in reality it just waiting to be unleashed and told
It lies dormant locked up in chains we created our selves
We just got to let it free and let it tell its story
poem by Stephen Merced
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Lady-justice
so blind,
look inside the bondage
of the bandage
covering
the eyes of the woman
holding the sword
and the scales
oh, her hands are tired
and once
she had scrutinizing eyes!
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Turning White Into Black
Deep inside their strong stubborn skulls,
and ev’n in their glitt’ring eyeballs,
they really know that black is black,
no way white will be black –
ev’n when they attempt to burn it to black,
its ashes cannot be black but grey.
But for the thirty silv’rs they want to receive,
they, from their basket mouths that can nev’r
hold on a dropp of wat’r,
say that white is not white but dark black.
Lies are now their Messiah here,
and their odour are their John, the forerunner;
Justice but their Israelites in Egypt!
Their hands are cloth’d with mess,
making all their body smell shit, shit of lies:
in the scept’r, it is there;
in the cross, it is there,
not ev’n our homes are spar’d of this mess.
They know that white is white,
for their eyes are not blind;
neith’r are they, themselves, confus’d,
but their greedy mouths have made it so,
turning justice to injustice!
poem by Eche Ononukwe
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Nucleus
How can you take away the nucleus
and expect everything outside of it
to stay mended together with strength?
A family is held together by a bandage.
You take away the bandage and you got a wound.
Sometimes a wound can heal on its own
and sometimes it can get infected or never heal.
I've seen it all before, the bandages go away
and then the wound that is left attacks itself.
The skin, the blood, the puss, and all the cells
that were once held together by one bandage
turn on itself and then it all melts as if touched by acid.
I don't think that will happen to our wound.
I think we'll all band together and form a new bandage.
It might not be one person holding it all together,
but it will be all of us coming together
like hospital staff to make sure we don't die of an infection.
poem by Cokbod Lodwogo
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I Do Love The Goddess Of Nature
I do love the Goddess of Nature though to her I never do pray
Her beauty it is all around me I learn from her every day
Yet the more that I've learned about her the more I have come to realize
That there is more far more to Nature her secrets she hides from our eyes
Were I a poet to the Goddess of Nature a poem worthy of her I'd write
A poem that a lover of poetry would feel happy for to recite
A poem extolling her great beauty a beauty none with can hope to compare
But we do not resprect her as we ought to and of that we ought to be aware
We pollute her oceans, waterways and air what we do to our Earth Mother to our own selves we do
Of others I should not be judgemental since I disrespect Nature too
Many humans are environmentally unfriendly we cut down mature and beautiful trees
And we foul the air with carbon emissions pollution is blowing in the breeze
We may disrespect the Goddess of Nature but the Goddess of Nature rules on
And she will be ruling the World when to nothingness we are long gone.
poem by Francis Duggan
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I Love Sensual Women
I love sensual women and not passionate ones. A passionate woman closes her eyes, moans and shouts and the enjoyment of a passionate woman is blind.
A passionate woman writhes about, grabs you with her hands without looking where, clasps you, kisses you, even bites you and hurries to reach her climax as soon as she can. She has no time to display her sexual organs, no time to examine, touch with the hand and kiss your sexual organs, she is in such a hurry to slake her passion. Having slaked her passion, the passionate woman will fall asleep. The sexual organs of a passionate woman are dry. A passionate woman is always in some way or another mannish.
The sensual woman is always feminine.
Her contours are rounded and abundant.
The sensual woman rarely reaches a blind passion. She savours sexual enjoyment.
The sensual woman is always a woman and even in an unaroused state her sexual organs are moist. She has to wear a bandage on her sexual organs, so as not to soak them with moisture.
When she takes the bandage off in the evening, the bandage is so wet that it can be squeezed out.
Thanks to such an abundance of juices, the sexual organs of a sensual woman give off a slight, pleasant smell which increases strongly when the sensual woman is aroused. Then the juice from her sexual organs is secreted in a syrupy stream.
A sensual woman likes you to examine her sexual organs.
poem by Daniil Ivanovich Kharms
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Childish Questions
A little child asked
its father, 'Daddy,
why the goddess of justice
ties strip on her eyes? '
Father said, ''Son,
she closes her eyes
to do impartial justice.'
The child asked again
'Daddy, if one can be impartial
by closing one's eyes,
then, why all the blinds
are not appointed as judges? '
poem by Madhav Sarkunde
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Liberty Needs Glasses
excuse me but lady liberty needs glasses
and so does mrs justice by her side
both the broads r blind as bats
stumbling thru the system
justice bumbed into mutulu and
trippin on geronimo pratt
but stepped right over oliver
and his crooked partner ronnie
justice stubbed her big toe on mandela
and liberty was misquoted by the indians
slavery was a learning phase
forgotten with out a verdict
while justice is on a rampage
4 endangered surviving black males
i mean really if anyone really valued life
and cared about the masses
theyd take em both 2 pen optical
and get 2 pair of glasses
poem by Tupac Shakur
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Liberty needs glasses
excuse me but lady liberty needs glasses
and so does mrs justice by her side
both the broads r blind as bats
stumbling through the system
justice bumbed into mutulu and
trippin on geronimo pratt
but stepped right over oliver
and his crooked partner ronnie
justice stubbed her big toe on mandela
and liberty was misquoted by the indians
slavery was a learning phase
forgotten with out a verdict
while justice is on a rampage
for endangered surviving black males
i mean really if anyone really valued life
and cared about the masses
theyd take them both to pen optical
and get to pair of glasses
By: 2pac
poem by Olufunmbi Aransiola
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My Beauty Hides
my beauty hides behind walls and lies.
she calls out but quites as the blade presses against my thighs.
my beauty hides behind mistakes and tears.
she smiles and pretends but she cant awake from her worst fears.
my beauty hides behind regret and envy.
she screams and claws because she wishes she was anyone but me.
my beauty hides behind broekn promisesand never.
doesnt she know i will always hide her forever?
my beauty hides behind never ending darkness and blame.
time flies but she wont ever be the same.
my beauty hides behind long shirts and tired eyes.
she use to be able to fly high and touch the skies.
but now my beauty hides..
poem by Julie Lopez
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Music 1
to me music is a chance
to escape every-day trance
to me music is a blanket
something to shelter me when
times are tough
to me music is an endless row
of doors the chance to escape
common life bores
but most of all music is a bandage
to help heal every day sores
poem by Daniel Madden
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Black & White
I am one with the world tonight
I am proud to be this far from you
You say that you have no regrets
But I know that you do
You told me someone stole the eye
I know him too
Ive come to the conclusion - yes, I know
That between black and white, there is no room for two
The scale might be wide, but there's no need to be blind
Cause between black and white, there is no room for two
I leave all of the grey behind
I see clear, I know that Ill find
You claim that you are innocent
But tell me who isnt
You think that youre going to be saved
Theres no such thing as a saint
Ive come to the conclusion - yes, I know
That between black and white, there is no room for two
The scale might be wide, but there is no need to be blind
Cause between black and white, there is no room for two
I've come to the conclusion - yes I know
That between black and white, there is no room for two
The scale might be wide, but there is no need to be blind
Cause between black and white, there is no room for two
song performed by by In Flames
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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