Alex Cole

“We try to show that the well-ordered society of justice as fairness is indeed possible according to our nature and those requirements. This endeavor belongs to political philosophy as reconciliation; for seeing that the conditions of a social world at least allow for that possibility affects our view of the world itself and our attitude toward it. No longer need it seem hopelessly hostile, a world in which the will to dominate and oppressive cruelties, abetted by prejudice and folly, must inevitably prevail. None of these may ease our loss, situated as we may be in a corrupt society. But we may reflect that the world is not in itself inhospitable to political justice and its good. Our social world might have been different and there is hope for those at another time and place”
― John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement

“Taylor and I both pride ourselves on having escaped that collapsed circus tent of epistemology—those acres of canvas under which many of our colleagues still thrash aimlessly about.”
― Richard Rorty

“Men who share the same rooms, soldiers or prisoners, develop a strange alliance as if, having cast off their armour with their clothing, they fraternized every evening, over and above their differences, in the ancient community of dream and fatigue.”
― Albert Camus, Exile and the Kingdom

“There is something splendid about innocence; but what is bad about it, in turn, is that it cannot protect itself very well and is easily seduced.”
― Immanuel Kant