John Quotes

Really, improv is all about creating for what's around you, in the moment, so it fits in a way that you can't see the seams. It's like a great jazz combo. I still do it.

A just system must generate its own support.

Of course, we know that not everyone agrees with assisted suicide, but people might agree that one has the right to it, even if they're not themselves going to exercise it.

You hear that liberalism lacks an idea of the common good, but I think that's a mistake.

There are infinitely many variations of the initial situation and therefore no doubt indefinitely many theorems of moral geometry.

People can make arguments from the Bible if they want to. But I want them to see that they should also give arguments that all reasonable citizens might agree to.

The idea of public reason has to do with how questions should be decided, but it doesn't tell you what are the good reasons or correct decisions.

An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception.

Ideally a just constitution would be a just procedure arranged to insure a just outcome.

There are various ways you might define the common good, but that would be one way you could do it.

Citizens can have their own grounding in their comprehensive doctrines, whatever they happen to be.

Public reason arguments can be good or bad just like other arguments.

Peace surely is a good reason, yes. But there are other reasons too.

A political conception just applies to the basic structure of a society, its institutions, constitutional essentials, matters of basic justice and property, and so on.

A scheme is unjust when the higher expectations, one or more of them, are excessive. If these expectations were decreased, the situation of the less favored would be improved.

The hazards of the generalized prisoner's dilemma are removed by the match between the right and the good.

The tree falls not at the first stroke.

Let him make use of instinct who cannot make use of reason.

When friends meet, hearts warm.

It is a foolish sheep that makes the wolf his counselor.

Little children, little sorrows; big children, big sorrows.

In a thousand pound of Law there's not an ounce of love.

A light-heel'd mother makes a heavy-heel'd daughter.

A pound of worry won't pay an ounce of debt.

Adversity makes men wise but not rich.

They that make laws must not break them.

Spend and be free, but make no waste.

A maid that laughs is half taken.

I love thee like puddings; if thou wert pie I'd eat thee.

That which is evil is soon learned.

After a Christmas comes a Lent.

A spaniel, a woman, and a walnut tree, the more they're beaten the better they be.

To go like a cat upon a hot bakestone.

The more you rub a cat on the rump, the higher she sets her tail.

Children pick up words as pigeons peas And utter them again as God shall please.

The Democratic Party: Con-men elected by the ignorant and the arrogant.

He that cannot abide a bad market, deserves not a good one

If wishes were horses, beggars might ride.

Every man praises his own wares.

The charitable give out at the door, and God puts in at the window.

A child may have too much of his mother's blessing.

The use of butterflies is to adorn the world and delight the eyes of men, to brighten the countryside, serving like so many golden spangles to decorate the fields.

I have more government than I want, more government than I need, more government than I can afford.

There aren't many fathers around here...If someone is old enough to father a child, he should be old enough to help bring it up.

Labour's constitutional blueprint is nothing less than a plan for the destruction of UK democracy.

What the study I chaired actually said was we needed tougher regulation of cash and capital in banks, as credit was too easy. Events proved that right.

Conservatism must be based on allowing everyone to become an owner - equity for everyman.

You have to be very rich to afford Labour, with 66 tax rises since they came in power.

There is no point in saving the currency if we lose the country that goes with it.

The star of the Magi which pointed so unerringly to the cradle of Christ points not less unerringly to one of the sources from which Christ came.