Justice

“Among the essential features of this situation is that no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.”

“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.”

“Technology is not a destiny but a scene of struggle.”

“The division of labor can be effected only among members of an already constituted society.”

“Rights are trumps.”

“Epistemic injustice is done to someone in their capacity as a knower.”

“Hermeneutical injustice comes about when there is a gap in collective interpretive resources.”

“Feminist epistemology questions the very standards by which knowledge claims are evaluated.”

“The union of primary and secondary rules is at the center of a legal system.”

“The aim of the law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

“An overlapping consensus is a consensus in which the same political conception of justice is affirmed by the opposing religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines.”

“Justice is not only about the right way to distribute things. It is also about the right way to value things.”

“Development can be seen as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy.”

“The discovery of natural right is the emergence of philosophy.”

“The aim of political egalitarianism is a society free from domination.”

“It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.”

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

“Speciesism — a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species.”

“I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.”

“Labor is the activity which corresponds to the biological process of the human body; work is the activity which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence; action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality.”

“The right to have rights... means to live in a framework where one is judged by one's actions and opinions.”

“Man is by nature a political animal.”

“Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state is either a bad man or above humanity.”

“I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others.”

“Society is indeed a contract... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

“Society is indeed a contract... but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection.”

“After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, — a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”

“National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever the name used, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.”

“The concept of communicative action refers to the interaction of at least two subjects capable of speech and action who establish interpersonal relations. The actors seek to reach an understanding about the action situation and their plans of action in order to coordinate their actions by way of agreement.”

“For by art is created that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth or State, which is but an artificial man.”

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

“The consent of the people is the only foundation of all lawful government.”

“The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind... that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”

“In the actions of all men, and especially of princes, where there is no court to appeal to, one looks to the end.”

“The workers have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite!”

“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!”

“The tyranny of the majority is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard. Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do through the hands of its political functionaries.”

“The tyranny of the majority is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard.”

“Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”

“The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences.”

“We suppose ourselves the spectators of our own behaviour.”

“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”

“Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, nonsense upon stilts.”

“True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions.”

“The commonwealth is the property of the people: the people is the multitude bound together by the agreement on what is right and the community of interest — and the republic that has lost the justice has lost the name.”

“Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”

“Act always for the common good: what benefits the hive benefits the bee, and the person who serves the whole is served by the whole.”

“Women have received from the gods the same reasoning power as men: the virtues are the same, and the philosophy that trains the reason belongs to them equally. The person who would be wise must learn, whether man or woman.”

“Obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.”

“In the capabilities approach, the central question asked by the political philosopher is not, "How satisfied is this woman?" or "How much in the way of resources is she able to command?" but "What is she actually able to do and to be?"”

“If we accept that our own interests count, and we can find no non-arbitrary reason for denying that the interests of others count equally, reason pushes us toward a more universal standpoint, one that takes into account the interests of all those affected by our actions.”

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

“The care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate, because his power consists only in outward force; but true and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind.”

“Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophize, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide... cities will have no rest from evils.”

“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.”

“In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Many a man believes himself to be the master of others who is, no less than they, a slave. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? I believe I can answer that question.”

“Man is by nature a political animal, and a man who is by nature and not merely by fortune citiless is either superior or inferior to man.”