Top 50 John Rawls Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.”

— John Rawls

Featured in: Justice Quotes

2. “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

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

— John Rawls

4. “Justice as fairness provides what we want.”

— John Rawls

5. “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.”

— John Rawls

6. “Justice is happiness according to virtue.”

— John Rawls

Featured in: Virtue Quotes

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

— John Rawls

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

— John Rawls

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

— John Rawls

10. “The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.”

— John Rawls

11. “If A were not allowed his better position, B would be even worse off than he is.”

— John Rawls

12. “Properly understood, then, the desire to act justly derives in part from the desire to express most fully what we are or can be, namely free and equal rational beings with the liberty to choose.”

— John Rawls

13. “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.”

— John Rawls

14. “The hazards of the generalized prisoner’s dilemma are removed by the match between the right and the good.”

— John Rawls

15. “The fundamental criterion for judging any procedure is the justice of its likely results.”

— John Rawls

16. “Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic.”

— John Rawls

17. “The sense of justice is continuous with the love of mankind.”

— John Rawls

18. “The naturally advantaged are not to gain merely because they are more gifted, but only to cover the costs of training and education and for using their endowments in ways that help the less fortunate as well.”

— John Rawls

19. “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

20. “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.”

— John Rawls

21. “Among the essential features of this situation is that no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does any one know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.”

— John Rawls

22. “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.”

— John Rawls

23. “We strive for the best we can attain within the scope the world allows.”

— John Rawls

24. “Intuitionism is not constructive, perfectionism is unacceptable.”

— John Rawls

25. “It is of first importance that the military be subordinate to civilian government.”

— John Rawls

26. “No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.”

— John Rawls

27. “The concept of justice I take to be defined, then, by the role of its principles in assigning rights and duties and in defining the appropriate division of social advantages. A conception of justice is an interpretation of this role.”

— John Rawls

28. “I have tried to set forth a theory that enables us to understand and to assess these feelings about the primacy of justice. Justice as fairness is the outcome: it articulates these opinions and supports their general tendency.”

— John Rawls

29. “The circumstances of justice may be described as the normal conditions under which human cooperation is both possible and necessary.”

— John Rawls

30. “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

31. “Ideal legislators do not vote their interests.”

— John Rawls

32. “Ideally a just constitution would be a just procedure arranged to insure a just outcome.”

— John Rawls

33. “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.”

— John Rawls

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

— John Rawls

35. “Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another.”

— John Rawls

36. “Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of a whole species can be a great evil. The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the form of life of which animals are capable clearly impose duties of compassion and humanity in their case.”

— John Rawls

37. “The extreme nature of dominant-end views is often concealed by the vagueness and ambiguity of the end proposed.”

— John Rawls

38. “In constant pursuit of money to finance campaigns, the political system is simply unable to function. Its deliberative powers are paralyzed.”

— John Rawls

39. “An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception.”

— John Rawls

40. “The other limitation on our discussion is that for the most part I examine the principles of justice that would regulate a well-ordered society. Everyone is presumed to act justly and to do his part in upholding just institutions.”

— John Rawls

41. “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.”

— John Rawls

42. “The claims of existing social arrangements and of self interest have been duly allowed for. We cannot at the end count them a second time because we do not like the result.”

— John Rawls

43. “There are infinitely many variations of the initial situation and therefore no doubt indefinitely many theorems of moral geometry.”

— John Rawls

44. “Thus I assume that to each according to his threat advantage is not a conception of justice.”

— John Rawls

45. “Ideally citizens are to think of themselves as if they were legislators and ask themselves what statutes, supported by what reasons satisfying the criterion of reciprocity, they would think is most reasonable to enact.”

— John Rawls

46. “The refusal to take part in all war under any conditions is an unworldly view bound to remain a sectarian doctrine. It no more challenges the state’s authority than the celibacy of priests challenges the sanctity of marriage.”

— John Rawls

47. “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

48. “While the distribution of wealth and income need not be equal, it must be to everyone’s advantage, and at the same time, positions of authority and offices of command must be accessible to all.”

— John Rawls

49. “First of all, principles should be general. That is, it must be possible to formulate them without use of what would be intuitively recognized as proper names, or rigged definite descriptions.”

— John Rawls

50. “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