Justice Quotes

"Legitimacy is recognized, not manufactured by procedure."

"The state represents the ethical life in action."

"Justice is the cornerstone of the state."

"In questions of rights, might is wrong."

"Reconciliation with the existing order is the death of critical thought."

"Patience is not virtue when patience means accepting injustice."

"Critique must be ruthless, turning its knife on itself as much as on its object."

"The idea that you can have absolute justice is the idea that causes the most injustice."

"I believe that justice is more important than happiness, and truth more important than either."

"We are not born equal; we become equal as members of a group on the strength of our decision to guarantee ourselves mutually equal rights."

"The ability to distinguish between good and evil is the price of entrance into human history."

"The curse of bureaucracy is that it replaces personal responsibility with collective irresponsibility."

"Law is the objectification of reason in the social world."

"Rights are the external manifestation of the will in the social realm."

"The abstract right of individuals must be balanced against social welfare."

"The state may not use its coercive apparatus for the purpose of getting some citizens to aid others, or in violation of anyone's rights."

"There is no justified sacrifice of some of us for others."

"Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them."

"A distribution is just if it arises from a just prior distribution through just steps."

"Voluntary exchange and free transactions are essential to justice."

"Property rights are not derivative from utility or collective welfare."

"Tracking violations against the baseline of rights violations reveals the moral wrongness of redistributive schemes."

"Nonconsensual taking of property, even for good purposes, is morally problematic."

"We cannot sacrifice some individuals for the greater good without their consent."

"Historical principles of justice require looking at how things came to be as they are."

"Patterned principles of justice cannot be continuously maintained without continual interference."

"Justice involves respecting the process through which holdings came about."

"One cannot justify a system of coercion merely by showing it produces good outcomes."

"The entitlement theory asks not just what distribution is best, but what process produces justice."

"Justice requires respecting how people's holdings have come to be."