86 Quotes by Michael Sandel

One of the appeals of markets, as a public philosophy, is they seem to spare us the need to engage in public arguments about the meaning of goods. So markets seem to enable us to be non-judgmental about values. But I think that’s a mistake.

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.

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.

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.

I do not argue that nature is sacrosanct in the sense that we must never tamper with nature. That would disempower, really, all of medicine. That would mean that we can’t combat dread diseases – malaria, polio, all of which are given by nature, if one thinks about it.

The norm of unconditional parental love, I think, depends on the fact that we don’t pick and choose the traits of our children in the way that we pick and choose the features of a car we might order, or a consumer good.

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.

Aiming at giving our kids a competitive edge in a consumer society – that, in principle, is a goal that is limitless.

I think very often when we think we are aiming at the best for our children, what we are really doing is trying to position them for competitive success in an intensely driven kind of society. I’m not sure that always leads to the good life or to happiness.