Nancy Gibbs Quotes

I think if you live in a country, basically you share the dominant values of a country although you may disagree on issues all the time.

At the end of the day, if there are truly ethical considerations, those have to override scientific considerations.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

We have a lot to gain through furthering stem cell research, but medical breakthroughs should be fundamentally about saving, not destroying, human life. Therefore, I support stem cell research that does not destroy the embryo.

When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.

A democratic medical establishment does not alter people's bodies to fit regressive social norms; it advocates for patients by demanding the social body get its act together.

It's hard to reconcile my personal beliefs with an entire institution like the Church or the Republicans. Or with people within those political persuasions who have such different ideologies but confess the same things I confess spiritually.

I hate movies that tell people what to think. I'm proud that Democrats thought 'Thank You For Smoking' was their film and Republicans thought it was theirs. I'm proud that pro-choice people thought 'Juno' was their film and pro-life people thought it was theirs.

There are situations which cannot honorably be met by art.

Commerce is against morality. Morality is going to lose every time.

Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.

It's a tough one for me, politics. I grew up in a house where my father is a Christian book salesman and a Tory, and my mum's a social worker. So I can always see the benefits of both arguments.

If we don't believe in moral absolutes and then we get into a cultural-political debate, how are we going to win?

The philosophical conservative is someone willing to pay the price of other people's suffering for his principles.

...the common sense of Christendom has always prescribed for national policy principles diametrically opposed to those that are laid down in the Sermon on the Mount.

I like to reveal people with some of the niceties of social behavior stripped away and the moral, ethical, and political issues are revealed.

Disagreements between incompatible beliefs cannot be settled by reasoned argument because reasoned argument is drummed out of those trained in religion from the cradle.

Maybe there's two types of people in the world: those people who favor humans over ideology, and those people who favor ideology over humans.

Anytime you're dealing with moral issues, in a government position, you're dealing with some sticky stuff because everybody's morality is different. So you may be a Christian and say "my morality is based on the Bible." But if it doesn't line up with the way they think it should line up, now you got a problem with them. And then you can say, "I'm more in line with the Bible," but you don't care about the Bible, so they are like 'why are you imposing these difficult rules on me? I don't even believe in that.' So you just have an interesting and sticky situation.

Most things that are politically right are morally wrong

In our country [US] equality means your liberal and freedom means you're conservative. That tension is there and it can't be handled on its own terms. It can't be handled as you go out of that and go back into natural institutions or natural law or divine revelation. Something outside of the system has to tell you the system has gone wrong.

Conservatives consider liberals well-intentioned, but misguided. Liberals consider conservatives not only wrong, but really, really bad people.

There is a dualism inherent in democracy--opposing forces pushing against each other, always. Culture clashes. Different belief systems. All coming together to create this country. But this balance takes a great deal of energy.

I think that contradictions, unless they're understood, unless they're analyzed, unless they're thoughtfully probed, unless people have a sense of what those contradictions mean - there's just as much of a chance that they'll move into embracing fascism as there is that they'll move into a more radical conception of democracy itself.

It was a lie but he believed in telling lies to people. Truth telling and medicine just didn't go together except in dire emergencies, if then.