John Rawls - Justice Quotes

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The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.

John Rawls
Let us now consider whether justice requires the toleration of the intolerant, and if so under what conditions. There are a variety of situations in which this question arises. Some political parties in democratic states hold doctrines that commit them to suppress the constitutional liberties whenever they have the power. Again, there are those who reject intellectual freedom but who nevertheless hold positions in the university. It may appear that toleration in these cases is inconsistent with the principles of justice, or at any rate not required by them.

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
A society regulated by a public sense of justice is inherently stable.

John Rawls
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 circumstances of justice may be described as the normal conditions under which human cooperation is both possible and necessary.

John Rawls
A conception of justice cannot be deduced from self evident premises or conditions on principles; instead, its justification is a matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitted together into one coherent view.

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 fundamental criterion for judging any procedure is the justice of its likely results.

John Rawls
Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.

John Rawls
We must not be enticed by mathematically attractive assumptions into pretending that the contingencies of men's social positions and the asymmetries of their situations somehow even out in the end. Rather we must choose our conception of justice fully recognizing that this is not and cannot be the case.

John Rawls
Yet it seems extraordinary that the justice of increasing the expectations of the better placed by a billion dollars, say, should turn on whether the prospects of the least favored increase or decrease by a penny.

John Rawls
Our concern is solely with the basic structure of society and its major institutions and therefore with the standard cases of social justice.

John Rawls
In justice as fairness society is interpreted as a cooperative venture for mutual advantage.

John Rawls
Justice does not require that men must stand idly by while others destroy the basis of their existence.

John Rawls
Thus I assume that to each according to his threat advantage is not a conception of justice.

John Rawls
Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.

John Rawls
An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception.

John Rawls
To each according to his threat advantage does not count as a principle of justice.

John Rawls