74 Quotes by John Rawls

In all sectors of society there should be roughly equal prospects of culture and achievement for everyone similarly motivated and endowed. The expectations of those with the same abilities and aspirations should not be affected by their social class.

A society regulated by a public sense of justice is inherently stable.

Justice is happiness according to virtue.

The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have.

The bad man desires arbitrary power. What moves the evil man is the love of injustice.

A just society is a society that if you knew everything about it, you'd be willing to enter it in a random place.

As free persons, citizens recognize one another as having the moral power to have a conception of the good. This means that they do not view themselves as inevitably tied to the pursuit of the particular conception of the good and its final ends which they espouse at any given time.

The significance of this special case is obvious and needs no explanation. It is natural to conjecture that once we have a sound theory for this case, the remaining problems of justice will prove more tractable in the light of it.

A just society is a society that if you knew everything about it, you’d be willing to enter it in a random place.