Justice Quotes

"Fair terms of cooperation must be justifiable to all participants from their own perspective."

"A conception of justice for the basic structure must ensure that all citizens are free and equal."

"Economic institutions must be designed to serve the interests of all citizens, especially the least advantaged."

"A just society protects basic liberties and ensures fair opportunity for all."

"Citizens have a natural duty to support and comply with just institutions."

"Fair background conditions require continuous institutional adjustment and reform."

"The capacity for justice is fundamental to human dignity and equal citizenship."

"The state may not use its coercive apparatus for the purpose of getting some citizens to aid others."

"The entitlement theory holds that justice depends on how holdings are acquired and transferred."

"Patterned principles of justice cannot be continuously satisfied unless something continually intervenes to upset actual holdings."

"Locke's proviso suggests acquisition is just when there is enough and as good left for others."

"The Wilt Chamberlain argument shows how seemingly just initial distributions become unjust through free exchange."

"A just distribution depends upon past events, not upon how the current distribution looks."

"Justice consists in three principles: acquisition, transfer, and rectification of holdings."

"Redistributive taxation assumes the state owns your earnings, which violates your rights."

"Rectification restores someone to the position they would have been in absent injustice."

"A society cannot be perfectly just if it violates the rights of even one individual."

"Justice requires looking backward to how things were acquired, not merely at current patterns."

"A person's holdings are just if they were justly acquired and justly transferred."

"The question is not what distribution is just, but what process respects rights."

"Just transfers preserve the justice of holdings through voluntary exchange and gift."

"A just society need not satisfy any particular pattern of distribution."

"Justice requires respecting how people actually came to hold their possessions."

"Acquisition is just when it leaves others no worse off than they were."

"Justice looks to whether current holdings respect historical entitlements."

"Distributions that arise from just processes are themselves just."

"A just holding requires both just initial acquisition and just transfer."

"Justice consists in respecting how holdings came about, not in their pattern."

"Rectification requires returning victims to their rightful position."

"Entitlement theory explains justice without reference to patterns or states."