“This is appropriate. Justice is the most 'political' or institutional of the virtues. The legitimacy of a state rests upon its claim to do justice. … Doing justice is not the primary purpose of the family, the classroom, the small business, even though a father, teacher, or employer ought to behave justly towards children, pupils, or employees when rearing them, teaching them,. and employing them.”
Justice (1993)
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Alan Ryan 20
British philosopher 1940Related quotes

Letter to Henry Lee (31 October 1786)
1780s

On the low social regard for teachers.[Ghate, Chetan title=The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Economy, http://books.google.com/books?id=kPYXpHSVbywC&pg=PA373, 13 March 2012, Oxford University Press, 978-0-19-973458-0, 373–]

Today they tend to ask, “Whom do you work for?”
Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), p. 4

“The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.”
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Diplomatic Immunity (2002)
“Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.”
Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter I, Section 1, pg. 3-4
Context: Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.

Comment to a friend about the US Congress, as quoted in The Life of Colonel David Crockett (1884) by Edward Sylvester Ellis.