John Rawls Quotes


[E]ach person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.


Citations

Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 60.

Related Quotes

This was the first time that the term “human rights” was used. FDR, a personal friend of Wells, then used the term in his Four Freedoms speech and thus was the first politician to use the term. Later Mrs. Roosevelt was instrumental in using the phrase in the United nations “Declaration of Human Rights” and enshrined the term in the English and world language.


John Rawls
John Rawls
  • Born: February 21, 1921
  • Died: November 24, 2002
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession: Educator

John Bordley Rawls was an American moral and political philosopher in the liberal tradition. Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1999, the latter presented by President Bill Clinton, in recognition of how Rawls' work "helped a whole generation of learned Americans revive their faith in democracy itself."