19 Quotes by Martha C. Nussbaum

There is danger in speaking so generally about "liberalism," a danger that has often plagued feminist debates. "Liberalism" is not a single position but a family of positions; Kantian liberalism is profoundly different from classical Utilitarian liberalism, and both of these from the Utilitarianism currently dominant in neoclassical economics.

As we tell stories about the lives of others, we learn how to imagine what another creature might feel in response to various events. At the same time, we identify with the other creature and learn something about ourselves.

We might say that there can be pity in its full-fledged form only where there is also mercy for self: for the self engulfed by a sense of its own utter blackness can never win through to a sufficient recognition of the sorrows of the other as other.

Knowledge is no guarantee of good behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior.

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.

This tradition argues that education is not just about the passive assimilation of facts and cultural traditions, but about challenging the mind to become active, competent, and thoughtfully critical in a complex world. This model of education supplanted an older one in which children sat still at desks all day and simply absorbed, and then regurgitated, the material that was brought their way.

Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger.

You can’t really change the heart without telling a story.

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.