Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Martha Nussbaum

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American philosopher Martha Nussbaum.

Last updated on December 25, 2024.

Martha Craven Nussbaum is an American philosopher and the current Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is jointly appointed in the law school and the philosophy department. She has a particular interest in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy, existentialism, feminism, and ethics, including animal rights. She also holds associate appointments in classics, divinity, and political science, is a member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and a board member of the Human Rights Program. She previously taught at Harvard and Brown.

American - Philosopher | Born: 1947

Source: Wikipedia

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.

Martha Nussbaum

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.

Martha Nussbaum

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.

Martha Nussbaum

Philanthropy can have a very strong selfish component.

Martha Nussbaum

If you look into the religions, they have this deep idea of human dignity and the source of dignity being conscience.

Martha Nussbaum

Knowledge is not a guarantee of good political behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior.

Martha Nussbaum

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.

Martha Nussbaum

We have fear as soon as we are born, we are born into a state of physical helplessness.

Martha Nussbaum

Politicians are at a great distance from the academic world. Barack Obama was my colleague at Chicago - but could i ever talk to him now? Never.

Martha Nussbaum

I'm very passionate about political issues, but I also think that listening to people who disagree is extremely important, and I try to build that into my teaching, sometimes by co-teaching with rightwing colleagues.

Martha Nussbaum

I am very impatient.

Martha Nussbaum

The first thing you get from the humanities, when they're well taught, is critical thinking. Philosophy in particular can play that role, not just in universities but in schools as well.

Martha Nussbaum

I am not a pacifist - I think that violence and self-defence are often morally justified.

Martha Nussbaum

My high school did not offer courses in philosophy, so the books that initially stimulated philosophical reflection in me were novels by Charles Dickens, Henry James, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Martha Nussbaum

What all emotions have in common, and what distinguishes them from bodily appetites, is a focus on an object and a view of that object as salient for one's life.

Martha Nussbaum

Clothing that covers the body can be comfortable or uncomfortable, depending on the fabric. In India I typically wear a full salwaar kameez of cotton, because it is superbly comfortable, and full covering keeps dust off one's limbs and at least diminishes the risk of skin cancer.

Martha Nussbaum

We see unreasoning fear driving a certain amount of public policy, perhaps more in Europe than in the U.S.

Martha Nussbaum

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.

Martha Nussbaum

If people think that women only wear the burqa because of coercive pressure, let them create ample opportunities for them, at the same time enforce laws making primary and secondary education compulsory, and then see what women actually do.

Martha Nussbaum

Fear requires belief that you will be harmed, and it is easily manipulated by rhetoric.

Martha Nussbaum

I listen to music. I particularly love Mozart.

Martha Nussbaum

I think a lot of people get hope through civic organizations and through their churches.

Martha Nussbaum

I love fashion, and I simply enjoy good design in clothes and regard that as one of my hobbies.

Martha Nussbaum

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.

Martha Nussbaum

Every time I undress in the locker room of my gym, I see women bearing the scars of liposuction, tummy tucks, breast implants.

Martha Nussbaum

Every single university student should study philosophy. You need to lead the examined life and question your beliefs. If you don't learn critical thinking, then political debate degenerates into a contest of slogans.

Martha Nussbaum

I don't waste time despising people.

Martha Nussbaum

Well, I'm trained as a classicist, so I like to read the Greeks and Romans.

Martha Nussbaum

You can't have a democracy when people don't learn to put themselves in the shoes of another person, who can't think what their policies mean for others.

Martha Nussbaum

I don't want to talk about the regulation of financial markets because that is not my sphere of expertise. It's a very complicated topic, and if I have written a number of books they are always on topics that I think I know something about.

Martha Nussbaum

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.

Martha Nussbaum

Men in particular think that they have achieved something if they can make a woman mad, particularly if she is calm and intellectual.

Martha Nussbaum

When I was four I joined a group of girls who were talking about their party dresses. I thought they were imagining, so I imagined a fantastic pink velvet dress with lots of jewels. But they were simply describing what they actually wore, and they had utter contempt for my obvious fiction. After that, I never joined a group again.

Martha Nussbaum

Among the good and decent men, some are unprepared for the surprises of life, and their good intentions run aground when confronted with issues like child care.

Martha Nussbaum

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.

Martha Nussbaum

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.'

Martha Nussbaum

Fear is ubiquitous in human life. It starts in infancy with our primal state of helplessness, where we can see what's going on but we can't move to get it. As we grow older we become a little more able to get what we want but then we're going to die so that gives fear another boost.

Martha Nussbaum

The U.S. has always understood itself to be united around political principles and not around culture, whereas the nations of Europe have a much more traditional conception of nationhood that is connected to romanticism, which thinks of religion and culture as ingredients of nationhood.

Martha Nussbaum

I enjoy intellectual companionship.

Martha Nussbaum

At first I imagined I'd write detective novels, because I loved 'Nancy Drew.'

Martha Nussbaum

As an undergraduate, I studied the Greek and Roman classics, and I went to graduate school in classics intending to work on the presentation of moral issues in various Greek and Roman tragedies.

Martha Nussbaum

In general, I agree with Socrates that what democracies badly need is the examined life, and we need to think critically about ourselves.

Martha Nussbaum

Teaching has always been a very important part of my life. It is one of the ways I contribute to society. It is also a source of energy and insight.

Martha Nussbaum

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.

Martha Nussbaum

It's a form of human love to accept our complicated, messy humanity and not run away from it.

Martha Nussbaum

Disgust is often more deeply buried than envy and anger, but it compounds and intensifies the other negative emotions.

Martha Nussbaum

It is easier to treat people as objects to be manipulated if you have never learned any other way to see them.

Martha Nussbaum

Emotions aren't just mindless urges; they contain thoughts about matters of importance.

Martha Nussbaum

You have to connect your work to what people are doing. A good way is to construct a bridge between theory and practice - Amartya Sen and I tried this by founding the Human Development and Capabilities Association where practitioners meet theoreticians and their discourse influences practice.

Martha Nussbaum

It's always been intriguing to me, the loveability of mortality.

Martha Nussbaum

When we have emotions of fear and pity toward the hero of a tragedy, we explore aspects of our own vulnerability in a safe and pleasing setting.

Martha Nussbaum

I'd like to be a student in Rabindranath Tagore's school in Santiniketan in around 1915, dancing in the dance-dramas he wrote.

Martha Nussbaum

If you've been betrayed by a spouse or a partner, it's much easier to focus on causing that person pain than it is to turn forward and actually create a life that's worthy of you in the future.

Martha Nussbaum

American men do have genuine reasons for anxiety. The traditional jobs that many men have filled are disappearing, thanks to automation and outsourcing. The jobs that remain require, in most cases, higher education, which is increasingly difficult for non-affluent families to afford.

Martha Nussbaum

People - and I think this is particularly true of Americans - don't like to be passive. They like to seize control.

Martha Nussbaum

The imagination is an innate gift, but it needs refinement and cultivation; this is what the humanities provide.

Martha Nussbaum

Disgust for the female body is always tinged with anxiety, since the body symbolizes mortality.

Martha Nussbaum

I wouldn't express anything without being very thoughtful.

Martha Nussbaum

It's always easier for people to face backward than to face forward.

Martha Nussbaum

My own students say they don't trust anyone who voted for Trump. How can you have a democracy with that?