John Rawls Quotes

I killed one man to save 100,000.

It was better that a little blood should be shed that much blood should be saved. The blood that was shed was bad blood; the blood that was saved was good blood.

Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a "necessary evil", it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.

The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one, analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.

You have to do something bad to do something good.

It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

There are times when the end justifies the means. But when you build an argument based on a whole series of such times, you may find that you've constructed an entire philosophy of evil." --Luke Skywalker

It is better to inconsistently save some lives than to consistently save none.

It was like either: (A) I was a terrible guy who was knowingly doing this rotten thing over and over, or (B) it wasn’t so rotten, really, just normal, and the way to confirm it was normal was to keep doing it, over and over.

There are worse things than a lie... I have found... that it may be well to choose one sin in order that another may be shunned.

You cannot cure a lesser evil by a greater evil.

I don't see how anyone could really think that if you have a choice between saving the life of one person and saving the lives of a million people, to say - well, I've saved the one - can you really take that seriously? I can't.

Sometimes you have to do what’s wrong in order to do what’s right.

Thus does a 'necessary evil' become an idol. Maybe we're stuck with it. But do we have to worship it?

The attempt to remove evil from the world by killing a thousand evil - doers, only adds to the evil in the world.

In our hearts there is a ruthless dictator, ready to contemplate the misery of a thousand strangers if it will ensure the happiness of the few we love.

How can you do the right thing when you can't figure out what that is? When all you have before you are choices in various shades of wrong?

The lesser evil is also evil.

Alanna didn't approve of lying, but in a pinch a lie was sometimes better than the truth.

But when the good people do know, as they certainly do, that three million persons (at the least estimate) were starved to death in one year by the methods they approve, why do they still fraternize with the murderers and support the measures? Because they have been told that the lingering death of the three millions might ultimately benefit a greater number. The argument applies equally well to cannibalism.

Our dreams of a pure virtue are dissolved in a situation in which it is possible to exercise the virtue of responsibility toward a community of nations only by courting the prospective guilt of the atomic bomb.

Any humane and reasonable person must conclude that if the ends, however desireable, are uncertain and the means are horrible and certain, these means must not be employed.

For the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater evil, since the lesser evil is rather to be chosen than the greater. .

If you choose the lesser of two evils, you are still choosing evil.