Michael J. Sandel > Quotes

“First, individual rights cannot be sacrificed for the sake of the general good, and second, the principles of justice that specify these rights cannot be premised on any particular vision of the good life. What justifies the rights is not that they maximize the general welfare or otherwise promote the good, but rather that they comprise a fair framework within which individuals and groups can choose their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others.”
― Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and Its Critics

“To read these books, in this way, as an exercise in self-knowledge, carries certain risks. Risks that are both personal and political. Risks that every student of Political Philosophy has known. These risks spring from the fact that philosophy teaches us, and unsettles us, by confronting us with what we already know. There is an irony: the difficulty of this course consists in the fact that it teaches what you already know. It works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings, and making it strange. [...] Philosophy estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing.

But, and here is the risk, once the familiar turns strange, it is never quite the same again. Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'. What makes this enterprise difficult, but also revetting, is that Moral and Political Philosophy is a story, and you don't know where the story would lead, but you do know that the story is about You.”
― Michael Sandel

“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, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'.”
― Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“The way things are does not determine the way they ought to be”
― Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“philosophy teaches us and unsettles us by confronting us with what we already know; there's an irony: the difficulty consisted in this course is that it teaches what you already know; it works by taking what we know from familiar and unquestioned settings and making it strange. that's how the examples work. ... philosophy estranges us, not by providing us with new information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing. The risk is once the familiar turns strange it is never quiet the same again. Self-knowledge is like a lost innocence, however unsettling, you find it; it can never be unthought or unknown.”
― Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“Other animals can make sounds, and sounds can indicate pleasure and pain. But language, a distinctly human capacity, isn´t just for registering pleasure and pain. It´s about declaring what is just and what is unjust, and distinguishing right from wrong. We don´t grasp these things silently, and then put words to them; language is the medium through which we discern and deliberate about the good.”
― Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“The more we regard our success as our own doing, the less responsibility we feel for those who fall behind.”
― Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“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

“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, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do

“The meritocratic ideal is not a remedy for inequality; it is a justification of inequality.”
― Michael J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?

“[T]he state should not impose a preferred way of life, but should leave its citizens as free as possible to choose their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others.”
― Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and Its Critics

“Debates about justice and rights are often, unavoidably, debates about the purpose of social institutions, the goods they allocate, and the virtues they honor and reward. Despite our best attempts to make law neutral on such questions, it may not be possible to say what’s just without arguing about the nature of the good life.”
― Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do

“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, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“Being good at making money measures neither our merit nor the value of our contribution.”
― Michael J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?

“Happiness is not a state of mind but a way of being, “an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.”
― Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do

“I am thinking of the everyday ways that conscientious, well-to-do parents help their kids. Even the best, most inclusive educational system would be hard pressed to equip students from poor backgrounds to compete on equal terms with children from families that bestow copious amounts of attention, resources, and connections”
― Michael J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?

“Justice is not only about the right way to distribute things. It is also about the right way to value things.”
― Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do

“A growing body of work in social psychology offers a possible explanation for this commercialization effect. These studies highlight the difference between intrinsic motivations (such as moral conviction or interest in the task at hand) and external ones (such as money or other tangible rewards). When people are engaged in an activity they consider intrinsically worthwhile, offering them money may weaken their motivation by depreciating or "crowding out" their intrinsic interest or commitment.”
― Michael J. Sandel, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

“A philosophy untouched by the shadows on the wall can only yield a sterile utopia.”
― Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“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, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do

“Philosophy is a distancing, if not debilitating, activity.”
― Michael J. Sandel

“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, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do

“It isn't easy to teach students to be citizens, capable of thinking critically about the world around them, when so much of childhood consists of basic training for a consumer society.”
― Michael J. Sandel, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

“For why do the successful owe anything to the less-advantaged members of society? The answer to this question depends on recognizing that, for all our striving, we are not self-made and self-sufficient; finding ourselves in a society that prizes our talents is our good fortune, not our due. A lively sense of the contingency of our lot can inspire a certain humility: "There, but for the grace of God, or the accident of birth, or the mystery of fate, go I." Such humility is the beginning of the way back from the harsh ethic of success that drives us apart. It points beyond the tyranny of merit toward a less rancorous, more generous public life.”
― Michael J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?

“Parental love is not contingent on the talents and attributes the child happens to have. We choose our friends and spouses at least partly on the basis of qualities we find attractive. But we do not choose our children. Their qualities are unpredictable, and even the most conscientious parents cannot be held wholly responsible for the kind of child they have. That is why parenthood, more than other human relationships, teaches what the theologian William F. May calls an “openness to the unbidden.”
― Michael J. Sandel, The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering

“For the more we think of ourselves as self-made and self-sufficient, the harder it is to learn gratitude and humility. And without these sentiments, it is hard to care for the common good.”
― Michael J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?

“We’re not only sentient beings, governed by the pleasure and pain delivered by our senses; we are also rational beings, capable of reason. If reason determines my will, then the will becomes the power to choose independent of the dictates of nature or inclination”
― Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“Social well-being … depends upon cohesion and solidarity. It implies the existence, not merely of opportunities to ascend, but of a high level of general culture, and a strong sense of common interests.… Individual happiness does not only require that men should be free to rise to new positions of comfort and distinction; it also requires that they should be able to lead a life of dignity and culture, whether they rise or not.4”
― Michael J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?

“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, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets