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

In all sectors of society there should be roughly equal prospects of culture and achievement for everyone similarly motivated and endowed. The expectations of those with the same abilities and aspirations should not be affected by their social class.

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

The bad man desires arbitrary power. What moves the evil man is the love of injustice.

Political philosophy is realistically utopian when it extends what are ordinarily thought to be the limits of practicable political possibility and, in so doing, reconciles us to our political and social condition. Our hope for the future of our society rests on the belief that the social world allows a reasonably just Society of Peoples.

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.

The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have.