Alan Ryan Quotes

#1. Modern liberalism has many roots. One of the most important is the ideas of a man described by an American critic as 'his satanic free-trade majesty John Stuart Mill' and revered by others.

Alan Ryan

#2. Extreme poverty would be hard to bear, but a miserable person is miserable however rich. A good character is our most important possession, rich or poor.

Alan Ryan

#3. The revolutionaries failed to institute the novel forms of social and political organization they hankered after; Workers would not accept a ten-day week, or state-appointed priests, or rectangular departements, or the cult of the Supreme Being.

Alan Ryan

#4. It is never right to injure anyone. It can never be right to make someone worse than he is.

Alan Ryan

#5. Richard A. Posner is an extraordinary person. If he did not exist, it would be hard to believe that he could. ( ... ) He writes with a flair that puts most journalists to shame and a depth of knowledge that puts most professors to shame.

Alan Ryan

#6. Philosophy is the art of seeing through appearances to discern the hidden reality.

Alan Ryan

#7. Justice is the most "political" or institutional of the virtues. The legitimacy of a state rests upon its claim to do justice.

Alan Ryan

#8. A colleague once described political theorists as people who were obsessed with two dozen books; after half a century of grappling with Mill's essay On Liberty, or Hobbes's Leviathan, I have sometimes thought two dozen might be a little on the high side.

Alan Ryan

#9. We do not go to work only to earn an income, but to find meaning in our lives. What we do is a large part of what we are

Alan Ryan