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Danh ngôn của Martha Nussbaum (Sứ mệnh: 9)

To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, the ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control that can lead you to be shattered.
Often, we feel helpless in lots of situations in our lives. The way anger gets a grip on us is it seems to be a way to extricate ourselves from helplessness.
On the whole, the accommodationist position has been dominant in U.S. law and public culture ─ ever since George Washington wrote a famous letter to the Quakers explaining that he would not require them to serve in the military because the 'conscientious scruples of all men' deserve the greatest 'delicacy and tenderness.'
It's easy to think that college classes are mainly about preparing you for a job. But remember: this may be the one time in your life when you have a chance to think about the whole of your life, not just your job.
Courses in the humanities, in particular, often seem impractical, but they are vital, because they stretch your imagination and challenge your mind to become more responsive, more critical, bigger.
You have to address anger, fear, and then to think about what the alternatives are: hope, faith, a certain kind of brotherly love. And then you have to set yourself to cultivate those.
Envy, propelled by fear, can be even more toxic than anger, because it involves the thought that other people enjoy the good things of life which the envier can't hope to attain through hard work and emulation.
Disgust is often more deeply buried than envy and anger, but it compounds and intensifies the other negative emotions.
Fear requires belief that you will be harmed, and it is easily manipulated by rhetoric.
I think we've lost the idea that politicians are part of the humanities. And we think of them as part of a natural science tradition, and we don't expect them to have the contact with literature, with history, with the richness of descriptive language that the humanities have always stood for. And I think that's a great loss.
Martin Luther King and Gandhi were not people who failed in self-respect. They were people of hope and great courage, and their courage was disciplined.
I love fashion, and I simply enjoy good design in clothes and regard that as one of my hobbies.
I think ageing is challenging, surprising, fun, and full of friendship, so that is the approach I'll take, objecting to the stigmatization of ageing in so many modern societies.
Some emotions are essential to law and to public principles of justice: anger at wrongdoing, fear for our safety, compassion for the pain of others, all these are good reasons to make laws that protect people in their rights.
Fear and monarchy pair nicely. But democracy means you have to work with people you may not like but you must still believe are your equals. And a fearful people never trust the other side.
My own students say they don't trust anyone who voted for Trump. How can you have a democracy with that?
I'm very upset that the Supreme Court ruled that citizens don't have standing to challenge the faith based initiatives on constitutional grounds.
I really disliked Philadelphia society - really, deeply disliked it. I spent a lot of my teenage years writing poetry attacking it.
I worked among many famous philosophers, and I tried to observe how they treated students. I knew which ones I wanted to be like, and which ones I didn't.
To be sure Plato did not favor 'affirmative action' to fill political and military offices in his own society; nor did he enroll women in his school.
Suppose you endow a charity, or university. You could put your name on it, but you could also endow it in honor of some teacher you had. People differ. There are people who prefer to be anonymous in their giving, or to put somebody else's name on it.
Mob rule is always extremely dangerous for the future of democracy.
Knowledge is not a guarantee of good political behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior.
The imagination is an innate gift, but it needs refinement and cultivation; this is what the humanities provide.