John Rawls Quotes.
Thus I assume that to each according to his threat advantage is not a conception of justice.
A just society is a society that if you knew everything about it, you’d be willing to enter it in a random place.
Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of a whole species can be a great evil. The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the form of life of which animals are capable clearly impose duties of compassion and humanity in their case.
The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.
I live in a country where 90 or 95 percent of the people profess to be religious, and maybe they are religious, though my experience of religion suggests that very few people are actually religious in more than a conventional sense.
Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic.
The bad man desires arbitrary power. What moves the evil man is the love of injustice.
Justice is the first virtue of social institutions.
If A were not allowed his better position, B would be even worse off than he is.
No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.
The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts.
Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another.
A just system must generate its own support.
The intolerant can be viewed as free-riders, as persons who seek the advantages of just institutions while not doing their share to uphold them.
The naturally advantaged are not to gain merely because they are more gifted, but only to cover the costs of training and education and for using their endowments in ways that help the less fortunate as well.
Liberal constitutional democracy is supposed to ensure that each citizen is free and equal and protected by basic rights and liberties.
The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have.