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An injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.

John Rawls

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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
Religion
Even
Tolerable
Injustice
Avoid
Morality
Necessary
Greater

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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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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.
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The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.
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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.
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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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There are infinitely many variations of the initial situation and therefore no doubt indefinitely many theorems of moral geometry.
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A society regulated by a public sense of justice is inherently stable.
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Religious faith is an important aspect of American culture and a fact of American political life.
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The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.
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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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Public reason arguments can be good or bad just like other arguments.
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No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.
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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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You hear that liberalism lacks an idea of the common good, but I think that's a mistake.
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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.
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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.
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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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Justice is the first virtue of social institutions.
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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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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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