Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by John Rawls, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring John Rawls quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 52 John Rawls quotes for you to read and share.
I have tried to set forth a theory that enables us to understand and to assess these feelings about the primacy of justice. Justice as fairness is the outcome: it articulates these opinions and supports their general tendency. -- John Rawls
The bad man desires arbitrary power. What moves the evil man is the love of injustice. -- John Rawls
At best the principles that economists have supposed the choices of rational individuals to satisfy can be presented as guidelines for us to consider when we make our decisions. -- John Rawls
The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. -- John Rawls
The fundamental criterion for judging any procedure is the justice of its likely results. -- John Rawls
The concept of justice I take to be defined, then, by the role of its principles in assigning rights and duties and in defining the appropriate division of social advantages. A conception of justice is an interpretation of this role. -- John Rawls
The sense of justice is continuous with the love of mankind. -- John Rawls
An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception. -- John Rawls
As free persons, citizens recognize one another as having the moral power to have a conception of the good. This means that they do not view themselves as inevitably tied to the pursuit of the particular conception of the good and its final ends which they espouse at any given time. -- John Rawls
The strength of the claims of formal justice, of obedience to system, clearly depend upon the substantive justice of institutions and the possibilities of their reform. -- John Rawls
First of all, principles should be general. That is, it must be possible to formulate them without use of what would be intuitively recognized as proper names, or rigged definite descriptions. -- John Rawls
There is a divergence between private and social accounting that the market fails to register. One essential task of law and government is to institute the necessary conditions. -- John Rawls
The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality. -- John Rawls
The other limitation on our discussion is that for the most part I examine the principles of justice that would regulate a well-ordered society. Everyone is presumed to act justly and to do his part in upholding just institutions. -- John Rawls
The refusal to take part in all war under any conditions is an unworldly view bound to remain a sectarian doctrine. It no more challenges the state's authority than the celibacy of priests challenges the sanctity of marriage. -- John Rawls
We may suppose that everyone has in himself the whole form of a moral conception. -- John Rawls
A scheme is unjust when the higher expectations, one or more of them, are excessive. If these expectations were decreased, the situation of the less favored would be improved. -- John Rawls
An intolerant sect has no right to complain when it is denied an equal liberty ... A person's right to complain is limited to principles he acknowledges himself. -- John Rawls
A just society is a society that if you knew everything about it, you'd be willing to enter it in a random place. -- John Rawls
Luther and Calvin were as dogmatic and intolerant as the Church had been. For those who had to decide whether to become Protestant or to remain Catholic, it was a terrible time. For once the original religion fragments, which religion then leads to salvation? -- John Rawls
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. -- John Rawls
A society regulated by a public sense of justice is inherently stable. -- John Rawls
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. -- John Rawls
No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society. -- John Rawls
The hazards of the generalized prisoner's dilemma are removed by the match between the right and the good. -- John Rawls
Ideally a just constitution would be a just procedure arranged to insure a just outcome. -- John Rawls
Intuitionism is not constructive, perfectionism is unacceptable. -- John Rawls
We strive for the best we can attain within the scope the world allows. -- John Rawls
The claims of existing social arrangements and of self interest have been duly allowed for. We cannot at the end count them a second time because we do not like the result. -- John Rawls
Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another. -- John Rawls
We must choose for others as we have reason to believe they would choose for themselves if they were at the age of reason and deciding rationally. -- John Rawls
In all sectors of society there should be roughly equal prospects of culture and achievement for everyone similarly motivated and endowed. The expectations of those with the same abilities and aspirations should not be affected by their social class. -- John Rawls
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. -- John Rawls
A just system must generate its own support. -- John Rawls
An injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice. -- John Rawls
Ideally citizens are to think of themselves as if they were legislators and ask themselves what statutes, supported by what reasons satisfying the criterion of reciprocity, they would think is most reasonable to enact. -- John Rawls
Justice is happiness according to virtue. -- John Rawls
The circumstances of justice may be described as the normal conditions under which human cooperation is both possible and necessary. -- John Rawls
Justice as fairness provides what we want. -- John Rawls
Ideal legislators do not vote their interests. -- John Rawls
Properly understood, then, the desire to act justly derives in part from the desire to express most fully what we are or can be, namely free and equal rational beings with the liberty to choose. -- John Rawls
Thus I assume that to each according to his threat advantage is not a conception of justice. -- John Rawls
The extreme nature of dominant-end views is often concealed by the vagueness and ambiguity of the end proposed. -- John Rawls
There are infinitely many variations of the initial situation and therefore no doubt indefinitely many theorems of moral geometry. -- John Rawls
It is of first importance that the military be subordinate to civilian government -- John Rawls
[E]ach person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. -- John Rawls
The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have. -- John Rawls
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. -- John Rawls
If A were not allowed his better position, B would be even worse off than he is. -- John Rawls
Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic. -- John Rawls
When the basic structure of society is publicly known to satisfy its principles for an extended period of time, those subject to these arrangements tend to develop a desire to act in accordance with these principles and to do their part in institutions which exemplify them -- John Rawls
In constant pursuit of money to finance campaigns, the political system is simply unable to function. Its deliberative powers are paralyzed. -- John Rawls