86 Quotes by Michael Sandel

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.

Parenthood is a school for humility. We can't choose the precise traits of our children, and that is morally important. It teaches us what William May, a theologian whom I greatly admire, calls "an openness to the unbidden."

In most of our lives, we are accustomed to aiming at mastery and control and dominion- - over nature, over our lives, over our jobs, over our careers, over the goods that we buy.

It's true that to speak of an ethic of giftedness, which is very much the ethic that I deploy in raising questions about designer children and genetic engineering - an appreciation of the giftedness of the child or the giftedness of life does have religious resonance, because a great many religious traditions emphasize the sense in which the good things in life are not all our own doing; they are gifts from God.

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.

I think too often in our society parents, who may have good impulses, overreach and try to mold and shape and direct their child.

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.

What I really want for my children is that they be loved and that they be happy and that they lead a good life.

There are really exercises in a kind of consumerist ethic that I think don't have the same moral weight as medicine or health.