Quote

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

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
Private
Register
Necessary
Institute
Failing
Fails
Conditions
Task
Law
Tasks
Social
Essential
Government
Essentials
Divergence
Market
Accounting

More quotes by John Rawls

Image
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.
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
Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another.
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
Liberal constitutional democracy is supposed to ensure that each citizen is free and equal and protected by basic rights and liberties.
John Rawls
Image
An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception.
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
Image
Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic.
John Rawls
Image
Now the good of political life is a great political good. It is not a secular good specified by a comprehensive doctrine like those of Kant or Mill. You could characterize this political good as the good of free and equal citizens recognizing the duty of civility to one another: the duty to give citizens public reasons for one's political actions.
John Rawls
Image
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.
John Rawls
Image
Justice as fairness provides what we want.
John Rawls
Image
[E]ach person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.
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
You hear that liberalism lacks an idea of the common good, but I think that's a mistake.
John Rawls
Image
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
Image
The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.
John Rawls
Image
The idea of public reason isn't about the right answers to all these questions, but about the kinds of reasons that they ought to be answered by.
John Rawls
Image
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
Image
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.
John Rawls