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Citizens can have their own grounding in their comprehensive doctrines, whatever they happen to be.

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
Happens
Grounding
Doctrines
Comprehensive
Doctrine
Citizens
Happen
Whatever

More quotes by John Rawls

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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.
John Rawls
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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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A political conception just applies to the basic structure of a society, its institutions, constitutional essentials, matters of basic justice and property, and so on.
John Rawls
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You hear that liberalism lacks an idea of the common good, but I think that's a mistake.
John Rawls
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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.
John Rawls
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Justice is the first virtue of social institutions.
John Rawls
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The extreme nature of dominant-end views is often concealed by the vagueness and ambiguity of the end proposed.
John Rawls
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The fundamental criterion for judging any procedure is the justice of its likely results.
John Rawls
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The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.
John Rawls
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[E]ach person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.
John Rawls
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A society regulated by a public sense of justice is inherently stable.
John Rawls
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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
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Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another.
John Rawls
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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.
John Rawls
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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
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There are various ways you might define the common good, but that would be one way you could do it.
John Rawls
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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.
John Rawls
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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.
John Rawls
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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.
John Rawls
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No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.
John Rawls