Top 26 Michael J. Sandel Quotes
#2. The idea that the right way of valuing goods and social practices depends on the purposes and ends those practices serve.
Michael J. Sandel
#3. Some see in our rancorous politics a surfeit of moral conviction: too many people believe too deeply, too stridently, in their own convictions and want to impose them on everyone else.
Michael J. Sandel
#4. In 1945, the president of Dartmouth justified limits on Jewish enrollment by invoking the mission of the school: Dartmouth is a Christian College founded for the Christianization of its students.
Michael J. Sandel
#5. As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the state is not far from its fall.
Michael J. Sandel
#6. Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'.
Michael J. Sandel
#7. If you look closely at the price-gouging debate, you'll notice that the arguments for and against price-gouging laws revolve around three ideas: maximizing welfare, respecting freedom, and promoting virtue.
Michael J. Sandel
#10. [T]he commitment to a framework neutral among ends can be seen as a kind of value [ ... ] but its value consists precisely in its refusal to affirm a preferred way of life or conception of the good.
Michael J. Sandel
#11. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.29
Michael J. Sandel
#12. Delta Airlines recently proposed giving frequent flyers a controversial perk: the option of paying $5 extra to speak to a customer service agent in the United States, rather than be routed to a call center in India. Public disapproval led Delta to abandon the idea.
Michael J. Sandel
#13. Ancient theories of justice start with virtue, while modern theories start with freedom. And
Michael J. Sandel
#14. Markets are useful instruments for organizing productive activity. But unless we want to let the market rewrite the norms that govern social institutions, we need a public debate about the moral limits of markets.
Michael J. Sandel
#15. A philosophy untouched by the shadows on the wall can only yield a sterile utopia.
Michael J. Sandel
#16. The mere fact that a group of people in the past agreed to a constitution is not enough to make that constitution just.
Michael J. Sandel
#17. Call center technology enables companies to "score" incoming calls and to give faster service to those that come from affluent places.
Michael J. Sandel
#18. And so, in the end, the question of markets is really a question about how we want to live together. Do we want a society where everything is up for sale? Or are there certain moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?
Michael J. Sandel
#19. If the only advantage of affluence were the ability to buy yachts, sports cars, and fancy vacations, inequalities
Michael J. Sandel
#20. If moral reflection consists in seeking a fit between the judgments we make and the principles we affirm, how can such reflection lead us to justice, or moral truth?
Michael J. Sandel
#21. The descent of sport into spectacle is not unique to the age of genetic engineering. But it illustrates how performance-enhancing technologies, genetic or otherwise, can erode the part of athletic and artistic performance that celebrates natural talents and gifts.
Michael J. Sandel
#22. Whenever my behavior is biologically determined or socially conditioned, it is not truly free. To act freely, according to Kant, is to act autonomously. And to act autonomously is to act according to a law I give myself - not according to the dictates of nature or social convention.
Michael J. Sandel
#23. To achieve a just society we have to reason together about the meaning of the good life, and to create a public culture hospitable to the disagreements that will inevitably arise.
Michael J. Sandel
#25. Toleration and freedom and fairness are values too, and they can hardly be defended by the claim that no values can be defended. So it is a mistake to affirm ... that all values are merely subjective.
Michael J. Sandel
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