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Knowledge is no guarantee of good behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior.

Martha C. Nussbaum

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Martha C. Nussbaum
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More quotes by Martha C. Nussbaum

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I think we need government to play a part in having a health policy that makes nursing care available for the increasing numbers who are going to need it.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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Philosophers should be, as Seneca put it, 'lawyers for humanity'. Make what you think and feel count the examined life has global dimensions.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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Singapore and China, which don't want to encourage democratic citizenship, are expanding their humanities curricula. These reforms are all about developing a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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When I came to Harvard, there were no tenured women except one, who was in a chair reserved for a woman. It's still an uphill battle, and I encountered great sexism in parts of my career, but I have to say that things are a lot better than they used to be. There are many women today doing wonderful work all over the academy.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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Notice that all the traditional things philosophers do, looking for validity and soundness, promote civic friendship. That sounds pretty pie in the sky, yes, but I actually believe it.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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I do think there's a lot of bad writing, and I worry about that in philosophy. I worry about it even more in literary studies, but I wouldn't blame it on any one methodology.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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People have a deep need to be legislators, and the idea of autonomy has become very precious.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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Economists get impatient with philosophy. They are often trained as skilled mathematicians. They don't like going back to ordinary language and first principles.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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TV has a lot of problems, but I think the Internet and social media have a lot more. Under the cover of anonymity people say the most vicious things.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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Business leaders love the humanities because they know that to innovate you need more than rote knowledge. You need a trained imagination.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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There's a gap in perceptions between women and men. Women feel much freer than they did, but still, when alcohol is involved, especially, there's a lot of sexual assault, and a lot of confusion about that. So, we need to focus a lot more on what consent is and on the importance of affirmative consent.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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The great philosophers of the past who wrote so beautifully - Rousseau, John Stuart Mill - had to write beautifully because they had to sell their work to journals. They had to sell books to the general public because they could not hold positions in universities. Mill was an atheist, and, therefore, could not hold a position in a university.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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Life is about more than earning a living, and if you're not in the habit of thinking about it, you can end up middle-aged or even older and shocked to realize that your life seems empty.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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Choice matters. You might have the opportunity to eat a nutritious diet, though you might choose to eat a lousy diet. What matters is the opportunity.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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Today, I think, the state of philosophizing about democracy is very healthy. It bridges political science and philosophy, as it should.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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If you really do want to increase women's status, you could focus on just that, but you'd probably better focus also on women's education. Access to artificial contraception, I would say, is also a very important determinant of women's status.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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But the life that no longer trust another human being and no longer forms ties to the political community is not a human life any longer.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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Nudity quickly becomes unremarkable when generally practiced.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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I think the imagination helps us move out of the purely oppositional mentality and see the world in a richer and more variegated way.
Martha C. Nussbaum