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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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Martha C. Nussbaum
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More quotes by 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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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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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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The great tragedy in the new feminist theory in America is the loss of a sense of public commitment.... Hungry women are not fed by this, battered women are not sheltered by it, raped women do not find justice in it, gays and lesbians do not achieve legal protections through it.
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 a profession is protected by academic freedom and tenure, it tends to turn inward. To a large extent that's good.
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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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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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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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.
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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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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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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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
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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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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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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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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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Knowledge is no guarantee of good behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior.
Martha C. Nussbaum