Ronald Dworkin Quotes

• Moral principle is the foundation of law.

  Ronald Dworkin

  Law, Foundation, Principles

  42 Copy quote

• Integrity is the key to understanding legal practice. Law's empire is defined by attitude, not territory or power or process.

  Ronald Dworkin

  Attitude, Integrity, Keys

  40 Copy quote

• Without dignity our lives are only blinks of duration. But if we manage to lead a good life well, we create something more. We write a subscript to our mortality. We make our lives tiny diamonds in the cosmic sands.

  Ronald Dworkin

  Life, Writing, Creating

  Ronald Dworkin (2011). “Justice for Hedgehogs”, p.437, Harvard University Press

  76 Copy quote

• Discretion, like the hole in a doughnut, does not exist except as an area left open by a surrounding belt of restriction. It is therefore a relative concept. It always makes sense to ask, "Discretion under which standards?" or "Discretion as to which authority?

  Ronald Dworkin

  Doe, Authority, Holes

  Ronald Dworkin (2013). “Taking Rights Seriously”, p.48, A&C Black

  37 Copy quote

• Balanced' is a code for 'denied': a right to free speech that must be 'balanced' against so exhaustive a list of other supposed values means a right that can be exercised only when those in power judge that the speech in question is innocuous to them.

  Ronald Dworkin

  Freedom, Mean, Power

  24 Copy quote

• We write a subscript to our mortality. We make our lives tiny diamonds in the cosmic sands.

  Ronald Dworkin

  Writing, Tiny, Sand

  Ronald Dworkin (2011). “Justice for Hedgehogs”, p.437, Harvard University Press

  21 Copy quote

• What is shocking and wrong is not [Lord Devlin's] idea that the community's morality counts, but his idea of what counts as the community's morality.

  Ronald Dworkin

  Ideas, Community, Morality

  Ronald Dworkin (2013). “Taking Rights Seriously”, p.305, A&C Black

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• Perhaps MacKinnon should reflect on these suggestions that the censorship issue is not so simple-minded, so transparently gender-against-gender, as she insists. She should stop calling names long enough to ask whether personal sensationalism, hyperbole, and bad arguments are really what the cause of sexual equality now needs.

  Ronald Dworkin

  Simple, Names, Issues

  "Pornography: An Exchange". Ronald Dworkin's reply to "Women and Pornography" by Catherine A. MacKinnon, New York Review of Books, Volume 41, No. 5, www.nybooks.com. March 3, 1994.

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