The Ethics of Identity Quotes

“A value is like a fax machine: it’s not much use if you’re the only one who has one.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity

“To create a life is to create a life out of the materials that history has given you.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity

“(And, like many philosophers, I am of the school that what goes without saying often goes even better with saying.)”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity

“I am not alone is doubting the imperative to respect cultures, as opposed to persons; and I believe we can respect persons only inasmuch as we consider them as abstract rights-holders.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity

“This is, of course, an easy Berlinian riposte. Start with some graceful hand waving about incommensurability; declare that nothing could reconcile these great goods; and (with a tip of trilby) commend liberal pluralism for living with the contradictions.”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity

“But it does not in general make sense to suppose that a legislature has an intent in passing a law. Legislation is a political process, in which deals are cut and compromises made. In both the public and the private deliberations about any statute many inconsistent reasons will be offered for framing a clause one way or another; many suggestions, not all of them consonant with one another, will be offered as to what the overall aims of the statute are. To extract from this mishmash of mixed motives a singular coherent intention will usually be impossible.46”
― Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity