The Dark Knight Justice and Judgment Quotes

How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from The Dark Knight.

Quote #7

THE JOKER: Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!

Actually, it's not fair. It's arbitrary, and those aren't the same things. But that fine point is lost on a guy clearly this bonkers. To him, the anarchy he unleashes is the only thing that can deliver justice in a world this flawed.

Quote #8

TATTOOED PRISONER: You don't want to die, but you don't know how to take a life. Give it to me; these men would kill you, and take it anyway. Give it to me. You can tell 'em I took it by force. Give it to me, and I'll do what you shoulda did ten minutes ago.

There's a big rope-a-dope here. This guy, who looks like the scariest human being on the face of the Earth, actually makes the very moral decision not to blow up the other ferry. We get the sense that he did a really bad thing once upon a time, and has spent the last 15 years sitting in a cell thinking about that. It's the most important moral moment in the movie. It's where Batman's proven right: that deep down inside, we know better than to do the wrong thing and that the better angels of our nature can prevail. Even this career felon, this enormous terrifying man, knows right from wrong. It's a pretty strong sign in the midst of an otherwise despairing movie that everyone is capable of redemption. Well, almost everyone.

Quote #9

TWO-FACE: You thought we could be decent men in an indecent time. But you were wrong! The world is cruel, and the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair.

Harvey's still looking for justice, he's just looking for it in the wrong place. Like the Joker, he's completely unhinged and the results make him believe that the random flip of a coin is somehow more just than a system of (admittedly flawed) laws written by non-insane people.