The imagination is an innate gift, but it needs refinement and cultivation; this is what the humanities provide.
— 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.
I thought as an actress I would be able to have broader emotional experiences, but then I quickly figured out that I wanted to think about tragic dramas, not act in them.
In my case, I give a lot to animal welfare because I think that's pretty neglected in America.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think that Muslims are criticised all around the world.
All of us, whether we are ignorant of philosophy or professors of philosophy, find it easier to follow dogma than to think.
I think Americans did learn that you just are not going to be able to live well if you subordinate people on the grounds of their religion.
My own students say they don't trust anyone who voted for Trump. How can you have a democracy with that?
When I am disgusted by certain American politicians, I fantasize moving away to Finland - a country in which I have worked a little, and which I see as a pure blue and green place of unpolluted lakes, peaceful forests, and pristine social-democratic values.
Emotions aren't just mindless urges; they contain thoughts about matters of importance.
I love fashion, and I simply enjoy good design in clothes and regard that as one of my hobbies.
Gandhi, when he was on the salt march, had everyone singing the song of Rabindranath Tagore, which goes, 'Walk alone, walk alone...' Now there's some paradox in that, with a million people on the march! But he was cultivating the thought that each individual has dignity, and the dignity consists partly in the willingness to stand up to authority.
I am not a pacifist - I think that violence and self-defence are often morally justified.
Knowledge is not a guarantee of good political behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior.
At Chicago I offer a course on Emotion, Reason and the Law that law students just love. But I am not there as a lawyer, my job is to teach philosophy.
I love to exercise.
With inheritances, it's really important not to give the impression that you're extorting your children, and one way you can not do that is to make it clear to them that you're not leaving the whole of your estate to them at all, but to various charitable organizations.
It is easier to treat people as objects to be manipulated if you have never learned any other way to see them.
I enjoy intellectual companionship.
I really disliked Philadelphia society - really, deeply disliked it. I spent a lot of my teenage years writing poetry attacking it.
Look at the great tradition of Western political philosophy. Those people were all immersed in revolutionary movements. Most weren't career academics - often, they were too radical to be accepted in the academy. Rousseau's books were banned. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill couldn't hold academic positions because they were atheists.
There is no reason why an American scholar cannot by himself or herself develop an adequate understanding of another culture. And I don't find any reason to suppose that the birth within a culture automatically confers understanding.
Hilary Putnam died of cancer at the age of 89. Those of us who had the good fortune to know Putnam as mentees, colleagues, and friends remember his life with profound gratitude and love, since Hilary was not only a great philosopher, but also a human being of extraordinary generosity, who really wanted people to be themselves, not his acolytes.
We are not just bundles of atoms being pushed around. But, there's something spiritual about us whether we give that a religious interpretation or not. And so, it's that sense of there being dignity to life that I associate with the word God. I mean, that's probably a pretty radical and agnostic way of interpreting it. But, that's what I think.
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.
Disgust and shame are inherently hierarchical; they set up ranks and orders of human beings. They are also inherently connected with restrictions on liberty in areas of non-harmful conduct.
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.
I have spent a lot of my career working on normative political philosophy, developing the 'capabilities approach' to social justice. I have also spent a lot of my career working on the structure of the emotions, and their role in human life.
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 wake up at night thinking about Euripides' 'Hecuba.' That to me is a story that says so much about what it is to be a human being in the middle of a world of unreliable things and people.
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.
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.
Mob rule is always extremely dangerous for the future of democracy.
Philanthropy can have a very strong selfish component.
In my experience and observation, senior appointments are rarely based entirely on merit.
People shouldn't be teaching if they break appointments, if they behave in an irresponsible way. I try to be down-to-earth and sensible. I want students to know I'm going to work for all of them and not play favorites and that I'm really going to do my work.
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.
Most Americans do really think that Muslims all want to take over and they don't want democracy and they want nothing but Islamic law.
I think that it's rational to fear your own death or to fear harm to your family.
I'm very upset that the Supreme Court ruled that citizens don't have standing to challenge the faith based initiatives on constitutional grounds.
Well, I'm trained as a classicist, so I like to read the Greeks and Romans.
We have fear as soon as we are born, we are born into a state of physical helplessness.
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.
I wish a person with a record of competence such as Nitish Kumar would get a chance to lead India.
Giving children the sense that you always ought to speak up for what's right, even if it costs you something, that's something you can do.
This is my Achilles heel. If some Internet technician is on the phone with me and he's being irrational and incompetent and stupid, I get really mad and I can sort of feel my blood pressure going up.
