Ronald Dworkin > Quotes

“Absolute confidence or clarity is the privilege of fools and fanatics.”
― Ronald Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs

“I disagree with you, but I recognize the integrity of your argument. I recognize your moral responsibility.”
― Ronald Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs

“Death has dominion because it is not only the start of nothing but the end of everything, and how we think and talk about dying - the emphasis we put on dying with 'dignity' - shows how important it is that life ends appropriately, that death keeps faith with the way we have lived it.”
― Ronald Dworkin

“Cultures have tried to teach a malign and apparently persuasive lie: that the most important metric of a good life is wealth and the luxury and power it brings. The rich think they live better when they are even richer. In America and many other places they use their wealth politically, to persuade the public to elect or accept leaders who will do that for them. They say that the justice we have imagined is socialism that threatens our freedom. Not everyone is gullible: many people lead contented lives without wealth. But many others are persuaded; they vote for low taxes to keep the jackpot full in case they too can win it, even though that is a lottery they are almost bound to lose. Nothing better illustrates the tragedy of an unexamined life: there are no winners in this macabre dance of greed and delusion. No respectable or even intelligible theory of value supposes that making and spending money has any value or importance in itself and almost everything people buy with that money lacks any importance as well. The ridiculous dream of a princely life is kept alive by ethical sleepwalkers. And they in turn keep injustice alive because their self-contempt breeds a politics of contempt for others. Dignity is indivisible.”
― Ronald Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs

“Interpret the new situation in the best light.”
― Ronald Dworkin, The Philosophy of Law

“The auction proposes what the envy test in fact assumes, that the true measure of the social resources devoted to the life of one person is fixed by asking how important, in fact, that resource is for others. [The auction] insists that the cost, measured in that way, figures in each person's sense of what is rightly his and in each person's judgment of what life he should lead, given that command of justice.”
― Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality

“Integrity is the key to understanding legal practice. Law's empire is defined by attitude, not territory or power or process.”
― Ronald Dworkin

“Philosophers used to speculate about what they called the meaning of life. (That is now the job of mystics and comedians.)”
― Ronald Dworkin