John Rawls Quotes

There were days when I hated politics. But I fought against hating the people on the other side because we were all in the same business - the business of building our country's future.

I hope the two wings of the Democratic Party may flap together.

Bipartisanship is “the oil of national government.”

Bipartisanship may be abnormal, but it does occur. The challenge is to explain why it occurs at all, and why it never lasts.

A democracy requires a certain amount of common ground.

The government … spends more and more of our tax money financing "faith-based organizations." Without faith we might relapse into scientific or rational thinking, which leads by a slippery slope toward constitutional democracy.

You must have a majority to make peace, not just a good idea.

Too often bipartisanship is equated with centrism or deal-cutting. Bipartisanship is not the opposite of principle. One can be very conservative or very liberal and still have a bipartisan mind-set. Such a mind-set acknowledges that the other party is also patriotic and may have some good ideas. It acknowledges that national unity is important, and that aggressive partisanship deepens cynicism, sharpens political vendettas and depletes the national reserve of good will that is critical to our survival in hard times

If we want to preserve the foundation of our democracy, it's vital that we find common ground that allows us to work for the greater good of this nation. This does not mean giving up our values. This does not mean swallowing a bitter compromise.

Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have.

Religious ideas and practices take root not because they are promoted by forceful theologians, nor because they can be shown to have a sound historical or rational basis, but because they are found in practice to give the faithful a sense of sacred transcendence.

Religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. ... near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry.

In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects.

Democracy is about constant vigilance. It's not straightforward, there will always be setbacks and you get particular be it religious fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalism - a partly conservative approach and actually trying to put women in a more traditional role. And we have to resist that.

No civilisation can grow unless fanatics, bloodshed, and brutality stop. No civilisation can begin to lift up its head until we look charitably upon one another; and the first step towards that much-needed charity is to look charitably and kindly upon the religious convictions of others. Nay more, to understand that not only should we be charitable, but positively helpful to each other, however different our religious ideas and convictions may be.

In my platoon, we came from different parts of the country, with different backgrounds, different religious beliefs, different political beliefs—and yet we all put those differences aside. Fundamentally, I believe that’s what the American people expect of Congress as well. We all ought to be able to come together in Washington and do what’s best for our America.

I think that what started out as a European Union originally was probably a really wonderful and world-changing idea, the idea of a kind of cooperation and interdependence between countries. But the idea that individualization would work on common ground, not on conflict, not against each other, but to find how each benefitted from the other I thought was an incredibly hopeful and positive possibility.

It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.

I would say that for the sake of human progress, the best thing we could possibly do would be to diminish, to the point of eliminating, religious faiths. But certainly not eliminating the natural yearnings of our species or the asking of these great questions.

Among the features peculiar to the political system of the United States, is the perfect equality of rights which it secures to every religious sect.

The loss of religious faith among the most civilized portion of the race is a step from childishness toward maturity.

Freedom is won by relegating religion to a purely private sphere remote from the body politic. In fact, the establishment of a free society is predicated on the idea that religion must be surgically removed from culture.

There has been a religious revival because - let me put it like this, the people that weren't traditionally religious, conventionally religious, had a religion of their own in my youth. These were liberals who believed in the idea of progress or they were Marxists. Both of these secular religions have broken down.

The skeptical relativist attempt to mandate a naked public square is undemocratic. It is also a danger to democracy.

Whenever we remove a brick from the wall that was designed to separate religion and government, we increase the risk of religious strife and weaken the foundation of our democracy.