The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.

A scheme is unjust when the higher expectations, one or more of them, are excessive. If these expectations were decreased, the situation of the less favored would be improved.

Ideal legislators do not vote their interests.

I have assumed throughout that the persons in the original position are rational.

An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception.

Justice does not require that men must stand idly by while others destroy the basis of their existence.

First of all, no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like. Nor, again, does anyone know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of psychology such as his aversion to risk or liability to optimism or pessimism. More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the particular circumstances of their own society. That is, they do not know its particular economic or political situation, or the level of civilization and culture it has been able to achieve. The persons in the original position have no information as to which generation they belong.

The extreme nature of dominant-end views is often concealed by the vagueness and ambiguity of the end proposed.

The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.

Ideally a just constitution would be a just procedure arranged to insure a just outcome.

The even larger difference between rich and poor makes the latter even worse off, and this violates the principle of mutual advantage.

Justice is happiness according to virtue.

Inequalities are permissible when they maximize, or at least all contribute to, the long term expectations of the least fortunate group in society.

We may suppose that everyone has in himself the whole form of a moral conception.

Essentially the fault lies in the fact that the democratic political process is at best regulated rivalry; it does not even in theory have the desirable properties that price theory ascribes to truly competitive markets.

There are infinitely many variations of the initial situation and therefore no doubt indefinitely many theorems of moral geometry.

At best the principles that economists have supposed the choices of rational individuals to satisfy can be presented as guidelines for us to consider when we make our decisions.

Social and economic inequalities, for example inequalities of wealth and authority, are just only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone, and in particular for the least advantaged members of society.

Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another.

In justice as fairness society is interpreted as a cooperative venture for mutual advantage.

The intolerant can be viewed as free-riders, as persons who seek the advantages of just institutions while not doing their share to uphold them.

Yet it seems extraordinary that the justice of increasing the expectations of the better placed by a billion dollars, say, should turn on whether the prospects of the least favored increase or decrease by a penny.

Intuitionism is not constructive, perfectionism is unacceptable.

The fundamental criterion for judging any procedure is the justice of its likely results.

The circumstances of justice may be described as the normal conditions under which human cooperation is both possible and necessary.

The hazards of the generalized prisoner's dilemma are removed by the match between the right and the good.

It may be expedient but it is not just that some should have less in order that others may prosper.

We must choose for others as we have reason to believe they would choose for themselves if they were at the age of reason and deciding rationally.

Greater intelligence, wealth and opportunity, for example, allow a person to achieve ends he could not rationally contemplate otherwise.

Many conservative writers have contended that the tendency to equality in modern social movements is the expression of envy. In this way they seek to discredit this trend, attributing it to collectively harmful impulses.

This is a long book, not only in pages.

We must not be enticed by mathematically attractive assumptions into pretending that the contingencies of men's social positions and the asymmetries of their situations somehow even out in the end. Rather we must choose our conception of justice fully recognizing that this is not and cannot be the case.

Our concern is solely with the basic structure of society and its major institutions and therefore with the standard cases of social justice.

Properly understood, then, the desire to act justly derives in part from the desire to express most fully what we are or can be, namely free and equal rational beings with the liberty to choose.

First of all, principles should be general. That is, it must be possible to formulate them without use of what would be intuitively recognized as proper names, or rigged definite descriptions.

I have tried to set forth a theory that enables us to understand and to assess these feelings about the primacy of justice. Justice as fairness is the outcome: it articulates these opinions and supports their general tendency.

A conception of justice cannot be deduced from self evident premises or conditions on principles; instead, its justification is a matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitted together into one coherent view.

The suppression of liberty is always likely to be irrational.

The difference principle, for example, requires that the higher expectations of the more advantaged contribute to the prospects of the least advantaged.

That persons have opposing interests and seek to advance their own conception of the good is not at all the same thing as their being moved by envy and jealousy.

I am particularly grateful to Nozick for his unfailing help and encouragement during the last stages.

When the basic structure of society is publicly known to satisfy its principles for an extended period of time, those subject to these arrangements tend to develop a desire to act in accordance with these principles and to do their part in institutions which exemplify them.

The first statement of the two principles reads as follows. First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a)reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.

A just system must generate its own support.

The claims of existing social arrangements and of self interest have been duly allowed for. We cannot at the end count them a second time because we do not like the result.

Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society.

Indeed, it is tempting to suppose that it is self evident that things should be so arranged so as to lead to the most good.

Let us now consider whether justice requires the toleration of the intolerant, and if so under what conditions. There are a variety of situations in which this question arises. Some political parties in democratic states hold doctrines that commit them to suppress the constitutional liberties whenever they have the power. Again, there are those who reject intellectual freedom but who nevertheless hold positions in the university. It may appear that toleration in these cases is inconsistent with the principles of justice, or at any rate not required by them.

No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.

Men resign themselves to their position should it ever occur to them to question it; and since all may view themselves as assigned their vocation, everyone is held to be equally fated and equally noble in the eyes of providence.