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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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More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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People have a deep need to be legislators, and the idea of autonomy has become very precious.
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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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Nudity quickly becomes unremarkable when generally practiced.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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People don't just want to feel satisfied. They actually want to act.
Martha C. Nussbaum
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I am a very big fan of the nation, actually. In Cicero's time, there was this idea that although we were members of the whole world of human beings, we also needed to connect our imaginations to a smaller unit. The smaller unit was something we knew we could live or die for, as Cicero died for the Roman republic.
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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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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
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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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In our swamp of media sensationalism and group-speak, BOSTON REVIEW stands out as a bold voice for reason and argument, one of the very, very few places that offers intelligence, integrity, and variety.
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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The humanities prepare students to be good citizens and help them understand a complicated, interlocking world. The humanities teach us critical thinking, how to analyze arguments, and how to imagine life from the point of view of someone unlike yourself.
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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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.
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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.
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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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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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Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger.
Martha C. Nussbaum