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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

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John Rawls
Age: 81 †
Born: 1921
Born: February 21
Died: 2002
Died: November 24
Pedagogue
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Political Scientist
University Teacher
Baltimore
Maryland
Rawls
John Bordley Rawls
Society
Peoples
Practicable
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Realistically
Hope
Condition
Ordinarily
Social
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Reconciles

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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.
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Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another.
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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.
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An injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.
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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.
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There are various ways you might define the common good, but that would be one way you could do it.
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The fundamental criterion for judging any procedure is the justice of its likely results.
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An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception.
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The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have.
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The sense of justice is continuous with the love of mankind.
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Justice is the first virtue of social institutions.
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No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.
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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.
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Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic.
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The idea of public reason has to do with how questions should be decided, but it doesn't tell you what are the good reasons or correct decisions.
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Justice as fairness provides what we want.
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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
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Citizens can have their own grounding in their comprehensive doctrines, whatever they happen to be.
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Different political views, even if they're all liberal, in the sense of supporting liberal constitutional democracy, undoubtedly have some notion of the common good in the form of the means provided to assure that people can make use of their liberties, and the like.
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The question is, we have a particular problem. How many religions are there in the United States? How are they going to get on together? One way, which has been the usual way historically, is to fight it out, as in France in the sixteenth century. That's a possibility.
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