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It's a form of human love to accept our complicated, messy humanity and not run away from it.
Martha Nussbaum
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Accepting the complexities of human nature is a profound expression of love.

This quote by Martha Nussbaum suggests that true love involves embracing the imperfections, complexities, and messiness of human existence. Rather than shying away from the difficult aspects of ourselves and others, genuine love entails acceptance, compassion, and understanding, acknowledging that these complexities are integral to the human experience.

Themes

LoveAcceptanceHumanityComplexityCompassion

In practice

Example use cases

In a workshop about relationships, this quote can inspire participants to embrace each other's flaws.

More from Martha Nussbaum

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.
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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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