Quotes from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

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

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

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

“If the spirit of their intercourse were still the same after their coming together as it had been when they were living apart,' Aristotle writes, their association can't really be considered a polis, or political community.
'A polis is not an association for residence on a common site, or for the sake of preventing mutual injustice and easing exchange.' While these conditions are necessary to a polis, they are not sufficient. 'The end and purpose of a polis is the good life, and the institutions of social life are means to that end.”
― Michael J. Sandel, quote from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

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

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

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

“the idea that the right way of valuing goods and social practices depends on the purposes and ends those practices serve.”
― Michael J. Sandel, quote from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“When Franklin D. Roosevelt launched Social Security in 1935, he did not present it as expressing the mutual obligation of citizens to one another. ... Rather than offer a communal rationale, FDR argued that such rights were essential to "true individual freedom," adding, "necessitous men are not free men.”
― Michael J. Sandel, quote from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

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

“The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used . . . He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties.21”
― Michael J. Sandel, quote from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“It is said that the Puritans banned bearbaiting, not because of the pain it caused the bears but because of the pleasure it gave the onlookers.”
― Michael J. Sandel, quote from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“Those who are greatest in civic excellence—not the wealthiest, or the most numerous, or the most handsome—are the ones who merit the greatest share of political recognition and influence.”
― Michael J. Sandel, quote from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“the moral worth of an action consists not in the consequences that flow from it, but in the intention from which the act is done. What matters is the motive, and the motive must be of a certain kind. What matters is doing the right thing because it’s right, not for some ulterior motive.”
― Michael J. Sandel, quote from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“Putting aside the issue of how compelling her need for money may have been, and how significant her understanding of the consequences, we suggest that her consent is irrelevant. There are, in a civilized society, some things that money cannot buy.41”
― Michael J. Sandel, quote from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

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

“air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts . . . the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud to be Americans.40”
― Michael J. Sandel, quote from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“the self-satisfaction and material preoccupations of his time was independent of his point about the injustices of poverty, the Vietnam War, and racial discrimination. But he saw them as connected. To reverse these injustices, Kennedy thought it necessary to challenge the complacent way of life he saw around him. He did not hesitate to be judgmental. And yet, by invoking Americans’ pride in their country, he also, at the same time, appealed to a sense of community.”
― Michael J. Sandel, quote from 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.”
― Michael J. Sandel, quote from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“They defined one benefit of a higher speed limit as a quicker commute to and from work, calculated the economic benefit of the time saved (valued at an average wage of $20 an hour) and divided the savings by the number of additional deaths. They discovered that, for the convenience of driving faster, Americans were effectively valuing human life at the rate of $1.54 million per life. That was the economic gain, per fatality, of driving ten miles an hour faster.15”
― Michael J. Sandel, quote from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

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

“Outrage is the special kind of anger you feel when you believe that people are getting things they don't deserve. Outrage of this kind is anger at injustice.”
― Michael J. Sandel, quote from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“(...) greed that preys on human misery (...)”
― Michael J. Sandel, quote from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“Honesty is the best policy. It’s also the most profitable.”
― Michael J. Sandel, quote from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“Moral excellence does not consist in aggregating pleasures and pains but in aligning them, so that we delight in noble things and take pain in base ones. Happiness is not a state of mind but a way of being, “an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.”
― Michael J. Sandel, quote from Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

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“There was a fine line between fear that would excite and fear that would paralyze the senses.”
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“Did you tell her?” “Tell her what?” “That you love her?”
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“Boneless with relief, she let him pull her forward, into the open air, into his lap. And in this wild darkness, in the middle of an empty earth, she grieved for both of them—indeed, for every human in this wretched world, who must face the trials life offered, negotiate the changes wrought by time. There was so little joy to cling to, so few certainties. Yet humans continued to endure. Continued to hope. The undeniable compulsion to survive powered them onward, like Sisyphus on his mountain.”
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“I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful-
The eye of the little god, four cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Collected Poems

“Keir was on a bench, removing his boots. Dishes were rattling off somewhere. Marcus must be making our meal.

Keir glanced up.

I risked a smile. “I think that Marcus is calming down.”

“Really?” His expression did not change, but there was a hint of laughter in his voice. “Marcus?” he called out. “The warprize did not eat at noon.”

The rattling dishes stilled and I heard an enraged cry. I hunched down as Marcus stomped into the room. “What? You think you live on air and light?” He glared at me, with both hands on his hips. “City dwellers.” He said it with disgust, and switched his glare to the larger man.

“I had kavage with Joden and Simus.” I voiced a small protest.

Marcus focused on me again. It was amazing how much anger one eye could hold. “You were told to take nothing except from the hand of the Warlord.”

I cringed and looked over at Keir, who gazed at us both with a straight face. This time I was sure I saw a glimmer of laughter in those eyes.

“Marcus is right.” Keir’s eyes grew serious. “While Simus and Joden have my trust, you are not to take anything from anyone else.” He rose from the bed and went to take his turn in the privy room. Marcus let loose a stream of words under his breath, and stomped out, using words and phrases that I did not understand. I sat there quietly as he stomped back in with two buckets of water for Keir. He was still muttering under his breath when he emerged, radiating anger with every step. I opened my mouth to say that I couldn’t have eaten if I couldn’t take food from another’s hand, but closed it quickly. Silence seemed wiser.

Marcus returned with a heavy tray and started the dishes to rattling as he placed them on the table. “No food.” He transferred dishes at a rate that made me fear for my life. “Didn’t rest.” He stepped back, surveying his handiwork. “Rolled in muck pits, that she did.” That one eye was focused on me again. “Sit.” He pointed to the chair.

I sat.

“Hands.”

I held them out, and Marcus poured the water over them, muttering something that did not sound like a prayer.

“Eat.” He crossed his arms.

“Shouldn’t I wait for…” My stomach chose that moment to express its interest in the food. At the sound, Marcus’ sole eye tapered its focus and drilled into me.

“Eat.”

I ate.

As soon as my mouth was full, Marcus started to explain, in detail, the meaning of the words ‘food’ and ‘rest’. I decided that the wisest choice was to keep nodding and eating.

Finally, Keir emerged from the privy room. “Marcus.”

Marcus stopped and looked over.

“Enough.”

Marcus clamped his mouth tight, poured the water over Keir’s hands, then stomped off, muttering”
― Elizabeth Vaughan, quote from Warprize

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