The relief of suffering is a great good. The curing of illness and disease - these are great human goods. This is the mission of medicine.

The way things are does not determine the way they ought to be

Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'.

The simplest way of understanding justice is giving people what they deserve. This idea goes back to Aristotle. The real difficulty begins with figuring out who deserves what and why.

Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share in a common life.

To argue about justice is unavoidably to argue about virtues, about substantive moral and even spiritual questions.

Whether you're a libertarian liberal or a more egalitarian liberal, the idea is that justice means being non-judgmental with respect to the preferences people bring to public life.

I think too often in our society parents, who may have good impulses, overreach and try to mold and shape and direct their child.

Aiming at giving our kids a competitive edge in a consumer society - that, in principle, is a goal that is limitless.

You can't go wrong with fish and chips.

What intrigued me most was not the technology as such but the questions about the human goods, the fundamental human values and virtues that are raised by debates over biotechnology.

No one invites you to the top - you have to claw your way up. When you get there, you will sit with the others who were also uninvited - giggling.

I want to know if we are the same, in the moments when we’re stripped bare.

A man may plant a tree for a number of reasons. Perhaps he likes trees. Perhaps he wants shelter. Or perhaps he knows that someday he may need the firewood.

You are not a real thinker if your thoughts haven't landed you in trouble yet

I play a man who is obsessed with his own beauty, so it's perfect casting.

Photography has all the rights, and all the merits, necessary for us to turn towards it as the art of our time.

I do enjoy life, I really do. Especially if I wake up the next day.

Writing really evokes empathy in a way very few things can do.

Poetry often enters through the window of irrelevance.

I don't think there's such a thing as a bad emotion. The only bad emotion is a stuck emotion.