Latest John Rawls Quotes from Interviews

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• You might say that, if citizens are acting for the right reasons in a constitutional regime, then regardless of their comprehensive doctrines they want every other citizen to have justice. So you might say they're all working together to do one thing, namely to make sure every citizen has justice. Now that's not the only interest they all have, but it's the single thing they're all trying to do. In my language, they've striving toward one single end, the end of justice for all citizens.

  John Rawls

  Justice For All, Working Together, Trying

• You hear that liberalism lacks an idea of the common good, but I think that's a mistake.

  John Rawls

  Mistake, Thinking, Ideas

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.622, Harvard University Press

• Different political views, even if they're all liberal, in the sense of supporting liberal constitutional democracy, undoubtedly have some notion of the common good in the form of the means provided to assure that people can make use of their liberties, and the like.

  John Rawls

  Mean, Views, People

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.622, Harvard University Press

• There are various ways you might define the common good, but that would be one way you could do it.

  John Rawls

  Would Be, Might, Way

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.622, Harvard University Press

• Citizens can have their own grounding in their comprehensive doctrines, whatever they happen to be.

  John Rawls

  Doctrine, Citizens, Grounding

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.621, Harvard University Press

• Liberal constitutional democracy is supposed to ensure that each citizen is free and equal and protected by basic rights and liberties.

  John Rawls

  Rights, Democracy, Liberty

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.621, Harvard University Press

• The good of political life is the good of free and equal citizens recognizing the duty of civility to one another and supporting the institutions of a constitutional regime.

  John Rawls

  Political, Citizens, Life Is

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.621, Harvard University Press

• Peace surely is a good reason, yes. But there are other reasons too.

  John Rawls

  Reason

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.621, Harvard University Press

• If you compare the United States with Europe, my view is that what happened in Europe is that the church became deeply distrusted by people, because it sided with the monarchs. It instituted the Inquisition and became part of the repressive state apparatus. That never happened here. We don't have that history.

  John Rawls

  Views, Europe, People

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.621, Harvard University Press

• People can make arguments from the Bible if they want to. But I want them to see that they should also give arguments that all reasonable citizens might agree to.

  John Rawls

  People, Giving, Citizens

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.620, Harvard University Press

• How did Madison get separation through Virginia and later Congress? The Baptists, the Presbyterians, and the smaller sects hated Jefferson; to them he was a secularist of the worst kind. But Madison could get Jefferson's bill passed because the Baptists, the Presbyterians, and smaller sects who were excluded in New England and in the South got together for their own protection.

  John Rawls

  Virginia, Together, England

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.620, Harvard University Press

• The question is, we have a particular problem. How many religions are there in the United States? How are they going to get on together? One way, which has been the usual way historically, is to fight it out, as in France in the sixteenth century. That's a possibility.

  John Rawls

  Fighting, Together, France

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.620, Harvard University Press

• The idea of public reason isn't about the right answers to all these questions, but about the kinds of reasons that they ought to be answered by.

  John Rawls

  Ideas, Answers, Kind

  Interview with Bernard G. Prusak, www.commonwealmagazine.org. September 25, 1998.

• What's important is that people give the kinds of reasons that can be understood and appraised apart from their particular comprehensive doctrines: for example, that they argue against physician-assisted suicide not just by speculating about God's wrath or the afterlife, but by talking about what they see as assisted suicide's potential injustices.

  John Rawls

  Suicide, Talking, Afterlife

  Interview with Bernard G. Prusak, www.commonwealmagazine.org. September 25, 1998.

• Public reason arguments can be good or bad just like other arguments.

  John Rawls

  Argument, Reason, Be Good

  Interview with Bernard G. Prusak, www.commonwealmagazine.org. September 25, 1998.

• The idea of public reason has to do with how questions should be decided, but it doesn't tell you what are the good reasons or correct decisions.

  John Rawls

  Ideas, Decision, Reason

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.618, Harvard University Press

• Of course, we know that not everyone agrees with assisted suicide, but people might agree that one has the right to it, even if they're not themselves going to exercise it.

  John Rawls

  Suicide, Exercise, People

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.618, Harvard University Press

• Now the good of political life is a great political good. It is not a secular good specified by a comprehensive doctrine like those of Kant or Mill. You could characterize this political good as the good of free and equal citizens recognizing the duty of civility to one another: the duty to give citizens public reasons for one's political actions.

  John Rawls

  Giving, Political, Doctrine

  Interview with Bernard G. Prusak, www.commonwealmagazine.org. September 25, 1998.

• A political conception just applies to the basic structure of a society, its institutions, constitutional essentials, matters of basic justice and property, and so on.

  John Rawls

  Justice, Political, Essentials

• A political conception covers the right to vote, the political virtues, and the good of political life, but it doesn't intend to cover anything else.

  John Rawls

  Political, Vote, Virtue

• A comprehensive doctrine, either religious or secular, aspires to cover all of life. I mean, if it's a religious doctrine, it talks about our relation to God and the universe; it has an ordering of all the virtues, not only political virtues but moral virtues as well, including the virtues of private life, and the rest. Now we may feel philosophically that it doesn't really cover everything, but it aims to cover everything, and a secular doctrine does also.

  John Rawls

  Religious, Mean, Political

• I live in a country where 90 or 95 percent of the people profess to be religious, and maybe they are religious, though my experience of religion suggests that very few people are actually religious in more than a conventional sense.

  John Rawls

  Country, Religious, People

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.616, Harvard University Press

• Religious faith is an important aspect of American culture and a fact of American political life.

  John Rawls

  Religious, Political, Important

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.616, Harvard University Press

• I'm concerned about the survival, historically, of constitutional democracy.

  John Rawls

  Survival, Democracy, Concerned

  John Rawls, Samuel Richard Freeman (1999). “Collected Papers”, p.616, Harvard University Press