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The majority of American states had laws by the 1930s that allowed for forced sterilization of socially undesirable categories of people, so-called feeble-minded, for example, and with Hitler culminating in genocide.

Michael Sandel

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Michael Sandel
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: May 3
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Political Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Michael J. Sandel
Michael Joseph Sandel
Called
Hitler
Law
Minded
American
Categories
Culminating
States
Forced
Sterilization
People
Allowed
Undesirable
Laws
Feeble
Majority
Socially
Example
Genocide

More quotes by Michael Sandel

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It is true that the Jewish tradition emphasizes the moral mandate to save life. It also has a different position from the Catholic Church on the moral status of the embryo. It has a more developmental view of when human life, in the sense of personhood, begins than does the Catholic Church.
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Most economics that is taught in college and universities today projects itself as a value-neutral science. This claim has always been open to question, but I think it's especially in doubt today.
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My argument is not that we must never intervene in nature. My argument is that there is a moral difference between intervention for the sake of health, to cure or prevent disease, and intervention for the sake of achieving a competitive edge for our kids in a consumer society.
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Self-knowledge is like lost innocence however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'.
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I think people who want to use genetic technologies to gain a competitive edge for their children are engaging in a kind of overreaching that could really undermine our appreciation of children as gifts for which we should be grateful and, instead, to view them as products or instruments that are there to be molded and directed.
Michael Sandel
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I think the reason we might hesitate to pay cash to students for doing well on tests or getting good grades or reading books is that we sense that the monetary payment is an extrinsic reward.
Michael Sandel
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Some parents expend great efforts to get their kids into the right nursery school or the right preschool, with the thought that that will set them on the path to success, to competitive success especially.
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Aiming at giving our kids a competitive edge in a consumer society - that, in principle, is a goal that is limitless.
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When I arrived at Harvard, I wanted to design a course in political theory that would have interested me, back when I was started out, in a way that the standard things didn't.
Michael Sandel
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Aiming at health, restoring health - that is a goal that is both morally important and limited, because it aims at the restoration of normal human functioning, which is an important part of human flourishing.
Michael Sandel
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I'm a supporter of embryonic stem cell research. I do think there are very important moral and also religious questions at stake in the debate over embryonic stem cell research.
Michael Sandel
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To argue about justice is unavoidably to argue about virtues, about substantive moral and even spiritual questions.
Michael Sandel
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A better way to mutual respect is to engage directly with the moral convictions citizens bring to public life, rather than to require that people leave their deepest moral convictions outside politics before they enter.
Michael Sandel
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It's possible to make sense of what's morally at stake in an appreciation of the gift of life, or the gift of a child, without necessarily presupposing that there is a giver. What matters is that the gift - in this case, the child - not be wholly our own doing, our own product.
Michael Sandel
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The way things are does not determine the way they ought to be
Michael Sandel
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I am trying to get at the moral arguments and the ethical status of various attempts at enhancement, or genetic engineering, or the bid for designer children. But there are implications for society at large.
Michael Sandel
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The simplest way of understanding justice is giving people what they deserve. This idea goes back to Aristotle. The real difficulty begins with figuring out who deserves what and why.
Michael Sandel
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You can't go wrong with fish and chips.
Michael Sandel
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It's ultimately the purpose of education to cultivate the love of learning for its own sake.
Michael Sandel
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I grew up in a Jewish family, and we have raised our children in a Jewish tradition. Religion gives a framework for moral enquiry in young minds and points us to questions beyond the material.
Michael Sandel