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 NussbaumRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of confronting negative emotions to embrace positive ones.
Martha Nussbaum's quote suggests that in order to foster a more positive mindset, one must first acknowledge and address negative feelings such as anger and fear. By identifying these emotions, individuals can then consciously choose to cultivate hopeful, faithful, and loving attitudes, leading to personal growth and healthier relationships.
Themes
AngerFearHopeFaithLoveCultivation
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming personal challenges, one might quote this to inspire resilience.
More from Martha Nussbaum
All quotes →This is true across every single society; we project grossness onto a racial or gender subgroup or caste. A big part of social subordination and discrimination is to ascribe hyper-animality to other groups and use that as an excuse for subordinating them further.
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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.
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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.
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I find so often, you know, just on a very mundane level; you've got a meeting and your child's acting in a school play. You can't do both things. And it's not simply that you can't do both, but whatever you do, you're going to be neglecting something that's really important.
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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.
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