Justice Quotes

"Justice between generations requires that we preserve fair opportunities for our descendants."

"The two principles of justice can be stated as liberty and fair equality of opportunity."

"A liberal conception of justice must remain neutral among competing conceptions of the good."

"Justice as fairness applies principles that all parties could rationally accept."

"The concept of desert applies within a framework established by justice."

"Justice demands that we ask whether institutions can be justified to those affected by them."

"The original position captures the intuition that principles of justice must be fair to all."

"Justice requires that inequalities work to improve the situation of the worst-off members of society."

"A fair system of property rights is part of the basic structure that justice governs."

"Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them without violating those rights."

"A person may not be punished even if this were beneficial to society as a whole."

"Equality of opportunity is not a valid principle of distributive justice."

"Historical principles of justice look to how holdings came about, not their current pattern."

"The question of justice in holdings is about whether they were justly acquired."

"End-state principles of justice are flawed because they ignore how distributions came about."

"The entitlement theory of justice has three principles: acquisition, transfer, and rectification."

"The question is not whether to distribute justly but whether distribution is just."

"Compensation is owed when one's rights are violated through another's action."

"A just distribution respects how people arrived at their holdings through voluntary exchange."

"Justice requires respect for how things came to be distributed, not patterns of distribution."

"Inherited wealth is not unjust if originally justly acquired."

"The principle of rectification corrects past injustices in how holdings came about."

"Justice in holdings depends on just acquisition, not on current material patterns."

"Transfer is the mechanism through which holdings change justly among people."

"Just procedures in acquisition determine justice in holdings over time."

"A person who has just holdings cannot have them taken for public purposes."

"Acquisition of unowned things is just under favorable conditions of fairness."

"The entitlement conception sees distribution as process-dependent, not pattern-dependent."

"Historical injustice can alter what would otherwise be justly held."

"Just holdings cannot be redistributed without violating the rights of their owners."