John Rawls Quotes
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Ideally a just constitution would be a just procedure arranged to insure a just outcome.
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Justice does not require that men must stand idly by while others destroy the basis of their existence.
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Essentially the fault lies in the fact that the democratic political process is at best regulated rivalry; it does not even in theory have the desirable properties that price theory ascribes to truly competitive markets.
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The difference principle, for example, requires that the higher expectations of the more advantaged contribute to the prospects of the least advantaged.
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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.
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The fundamental criterion for judging any procedure is the justice of its likely results.
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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.
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Justice is happiness according to virtue.
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In constant pursuit of money to finance campaigns, the political system is simply unable to function. Its deliberative powers are paralyzed.
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No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.
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We may suppose that everyone has in himself the whole form of a moral conception.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Our concern is solely with the basic structure of society and its major institutions and therefore with the standard cases of social justice.
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Men resign themselves to their position should it ever occur to them to question it; and since all may view themselves as assigned their vocation, everyone is held to be equally fated and equally noble in the eyes of providence.
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In justice as fairness society is interpreted as a cooperative venture for mutual advantage.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another.
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The bad man desires arbitrary power. What moves the evil man is the love of injustice.
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The circumstances of justice may be described as the normal conditions under which human cooperation is both possible and necessary.
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An individual who finds that he enjoys seeing others in positions of lesser liberty understands that he has no claim whatever to this enjoyment.