Martha C. Nussbaum Quotes - Page 2

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• After all, the nation is not just an entity. It's a story. It's a story of what's salient, what brought us together, what we are willing to live and die for.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Together, Stories, Entity

  Source: www.neh.gov

  6 Copy quote

• The thing that I find so bad about anger is the desire for payback. Of course, it is very human to wish for revenge. Your mother has died in the hospital, and the first thought a lot of people have is, I'll sue the doctor. You feel helpless, and you think, I'm less helpless if I'm doing something active that makes someone else pay. And social media make it easy to inflict all kinds of pain on other people. But what good does it do?

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Mother, Pain, Revenge

  Source: www.neh.gov

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Believe, Sky, Pie

  Source: www.neh.gov

  5 Copy quote

• People don't just want to feel satisfied. They actually want to act.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  People, Want, Satisfied

  Source: www.neh.gov

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Ideas, Imagination, Fans

  Source: www.neh.gov

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Careers, Battle, Today

  Source: www.neh.gov

  20 Copy quote

• With the rise of capitalism, it became more obvious that people pursue individual self-interest. The great nationalist in Italy, Giuseppe Mazzini, a wonderful philosopher, said that we need the nation. We need something that people can lean on, from which they can then reach out to the whole world. The idea of all humanity is too vague. It can't motivate human aspiration in a reliable way.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Self, Ideas, People

  Source: www.neh.gov

  17 Copy quote

• 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

  Focus, Important, Want

  Source: www.neh.gov

  9 Copy quote

• It's not as though there aren't many, many art works and many other cultures, but there was something special about the civic nature of the Greek theater. All the citizens stopped working. They came into these theaters. It wasn't like a Broadway theater where you sit in the dark and you expect to be passively entertained. You're in this theater, amphitheater, in bright sunlight looking at your fellow citizens, recognizing their faces, and thinking with them about the future of your city. I think very few cultures have had a theatrical tradition that is quite so civic.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Art, Dark, Thinking

  Source: www.neh.gov

  20 Copy quote

• People have a deep need to be legislators, and the idea of autonomy has become very precious.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Ideas, People, Needs

  Source: www.neh.gov

  11 Copy quote

• The EU might have become a large federal nation. But they would have had to do things differently. Number one, they would've had to make people feel like participants in a common project of autonomous law-giving. Much more political accountability, much more participation. That didn't happen, I think, because the movers and shakers were more concerned with economic union than political union.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Thinking, Numbers, Law

  Source: www.neh.gov

  6 Copy quote

• The GDP approach doesn't address many aspects of human life: health, education, political liberty, religious liberty, employment opportunities. And these are not all that well correlated with gross domestic product. We also have to think about equality among groups. And freedom of speech and religion. China always ranks near the top of developing countries these days, but there are lots of things we might see as lacking in China.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Country, Religious, Thinking

  Source: www.neh.gov

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Integrity, Media, Boston

  29 Copy quote

• The Greek tragedies and comedies are like a roadmap to all the ways in which trying to live this rich, full life can go wrong. You could get into a war. You could find that you have members of your family on the wrong side of a political crisis. You could be raped. You could find that your child has gone crazy because of some horrible experience she's had.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Children, Crazy, War

  Source: www.neh.gov

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, Confusion, Focus

  Source: www.neh.gov

  4 Copy quote

• There are no general-interest media that all of us can tap into. I'm not a good person to talk to about social media. I just avoid it. I'm suspicious also of the culture of venting. But the bigger question is, How can we in this media world have a genuine civic conversation? I mean, look at Franklin Roosevelt. He had these radio talks that all Americans listened to, and there was a common civic conversation that came out of it.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Mean, Media, World

  Source: www.neh.gov

  9 Copy quote

• It's a good thing that we're protected by tenure and academic freedom, but we should realize that it creates a risk of getting cut off. Scholars should write, at least sometimes, for the general public.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Writing, Cutting, Academic Freedom

  Source: www.neh.gov

  5 Copy quote

• I think that's what we really need in America, for people to hear each other. And I think philosophy could do a little bit better on that.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Philosophy, Thinking, America

  Source: www.neh.gov

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Philosophy, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.neh.gov

  4 Copy quote

• We really have to think about aging because women are living longer than men. More of the people who need care are women. A lot of them are living alone, with no one to care for them, or they're shunted into institutions. I would like to see a sensible aging policy more like what the Nordic countries have. They're cutting back those programs, but there you can still have in-home nursing care. You don't have to rely on your children. I personally don't want to be a burden on my daughter.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Country, Daughter, Children

  Source: www.neh.gov

  4 Copy quote

• We are lucky in the United States to have our liberal arts system. In most countries, if you go to university, you have to decide for all English literature or no literature, all philosophy or no philosophy. But we have a system that is one part general education and one part specialization. If your parents say you've got to major in computer science, you can do that. But you can also take general education courses in the humanities, and usually you have to.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Country, Art, Philosophy

  Source: www.neh.gov

  4 Copy quote

• There was a time, before I was in graduate school, when political philosophy pretty much ceased to exist. The positivists thought there were only two things you could do: conceptual analysis or empirical investigation. Any kind of political theory or even ethical theory was nonsense.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Philosophy, School, Two

  Source: www.neh.gov

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Nursing, Thinking, Play

  Source: www.neh.gov

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Academic Freedom, Inward, Turns

  Source: www.neh.gov

  4 Copy quote

• You have to pay so much to see theater, even in Chicago. In the Greek theater, you didn't have to pay anything. You actually had to go, and you just sat there all day.

  Martha C. Nussbaum

  Greek, Chicago, Pay

  Source: www.neh.gov

  4 Copy quote

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