Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Rawls
Age: 81 †
Born: 1921
Born: February 21
Died: 2002
Died: November 24
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Political Scientist
University Teacher
Baltimore
Maryland
Rawls
John Bordley Rawls
Society
Unjust
Natural
Institutions
Born
Neither
Facts
Deal
Persons
Deals
Way
Position
Particular
Simply
Distribution

More quotes by John Rawls

Image
The sense of justice is continuous with the love of mankind.
John Rawls
Image
Justice as fairness provides what we want.
John Rawls
Image
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
Image
The fundamental criterion for judging any procedure is the justice of its likely results.
John Rawls
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Political philosophy is realistically utopian when it extends what are ordinarily thought to be the limits of practicable political possibility and, in so doing, reconciles us to our political and social condition. Our hope for the future of our society rests on the belief that the social world allows a reasonably just Society of Peoples.
John Rawls
Image
No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.
John Rawls
Image
The good of political life is the good of free and equal citizens recognizing the duty of civility to one another and supporting the institutions of a constitutional regime.
John Rawls
Image
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
Image
An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception.
John Rawls
Image
Liberal constitutional democracy is supposed to ensure that each citizen is free and equal and protected by basic rights and liberties.
John Rawls
Image
If you compare the United States with Europe, my view is that what happened in Europe is that the church became deeply distrusted by people, because it sided with the monarchs. It instituted the Inquisition and became part of the repressive state apparatus. That never happened here. We don't have that history.
John Rawls
Image
A political conception covers the right to vote, the political virtues, and the good of political life, but it doesn't intend to cover anything else.
John Rawls
Image
A society regulated by a public sense of justice is inherently stable.
John Rawls
Image
Of course, we know that not everyone agrees with assisted suicide, but people might agree that one has the right to it, even if they're not themselves going to exercise it.
John Rawls
Image
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
Image
There are infinitely many variations of the initial situation and therefore no doubt indefinitely many theorems of moral geometry.
John Rawls
Image
The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have.
John Rawls
Image
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