Robert P. George: Human

“There are no lebensunwertes leben--no "lives unworthy of life." Every member of the human family bears profound, inherent and equal dignity.”

Robert P. George

Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/920123964982284293 (16 October 2017)
2017

Life , Family

“Both views have had their glory moments, and both have had their moments of shame. Whether we’re conservatives or whether we’re liberals, it should remind us that we are human beings who are fallible.”

Robert P. George

As quoted in "Liberals Hold the Moral High Ground" https://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/liberals-hold-moral-high-ground, Intelligence Squared Debates
2017

“People of faith--all faiths--need to understand that everyone, including the unbeliever, has a basic human right to religious freedom.”

Robert P. George

Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/949813370651336707 (6 January 2018)
2018

People , Faith , Understanding , Freedom

“Of course one could claim that the human embryo or fetus is not (yet) a human being, but that's just science-denial. Or one could claim that human beings in early developmental stages don't have dignity but that is a denial that dignity is inherent and that all humans are equal.”

Robert P. George

Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/941035451904856064 (13 December 2017)
2017

Science

“Roe was a shock to me because even at 16 or 17 years old I understood that abortion was killing an unborn baby. I mean it was simple and straightforward and indeed it is simple and straightforward. We try to make this complicated, but it's simple and straightforward. You've got a new human life developing in the mother's womb and abortion is the business of killing that baby. Now, the Planned Parenthood videos have made that very graphic but you didn't actually need the videos, uh, at least I didn't need to the videos to know that. But even then we didn't think of abortion as something Democrats were for and Republicans were against. The division of the parties into a pro-abortion party and an anti-abortion party came a little later.”

Robert P. George

2016, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

Life , Business , Thinking , Baby

“One needn't be a Christian to be pro-life. Many pro-life people aren't. But a fundamental tenet of Christian faith is the profound, inherent & equal dignity and right to life of every member of the human family. That, in the end, simply cannot be squared with the pro-choice view.”

Robert P. George

Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/941035451904856064 (13 December 2017)
2017

Life , People , Family , Faith

“I'm increasingly convinced that the principal moral errors of contemporary western societies, especially among elites, are rooted in the triumph of Hobbes' view of human beings as basically machines for having experiences. It's the anthropology underwriting the Age of Feeling.”

Robert P. George

Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/947851434816655361 (1 January 2018)
2018

Age , Error , Feeling

“Despite our profound differences, Americans on both or all sides of the great cultural struggles of our day must recognize their opponents (or most, or at least many, of their opponents) as reasonable people of goodwill who, doing their best, have arrived at different conclusions about fundamental moral questions — including basic questions of justice and human rights. If that is to happen, political and intellectual leaders, as well as people in the media, are going to have to model treating their adversaries with respect — and not demonizing them.”

Robert P. George

2017, Interview with Matthew Bunson (2017)

People , Justice , Question

“I say to my students, I say to my own children, I say to myself, uh the most abject form of slavery there is, is slavery to one's own feelings or passions or desires. The goal, the project of living a human life, a truly human life, is all about self-mastering. Now, if people live in a culture that encourages them to be masters of themselves and if they become masters of themselves, if they're able to control their own passions, no one's going to be perfect, we're not going to eliminate sin from the world or from the human heart, but if we're able to be masters of ourselves, masters of our own passions, then we will be able as a people to govern ourselves, we can genuinely make the republican experiment in ordered liberty work. But if we, if we lose it at the personal level, there's no way it's going to work at the societal level.”

Robert P. George

2016, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

Life , Children , People , World

“[E]ugenic doctrine did not originate with the Nazis. It began with polite, urbane, well-educated, sophisticated people who saw "social hygiene" via, among other methods, euthanasia, as representing progress and modernity. They wanted to ditch the old Judaeo-Christian belief in the sanctity of all human life and replace it with what they regarded as a more advanced and rational philosophy.”

Robert P. George

2018, On Holocaust Remembrance Day (2018)

Life , People , Education

“[T]ruth is the ground and condition of freedom. Unless it is true that human beings deserve to have fundamental liberties respected and protected, the tyrant does no wrong in violating them. Relativism, skepticism, and subjectivism about truth provide no secure basis for freedom. We should honor civil liberties because the norms enjoining us to respect and protect them are valid, sound, in a word, true.”

Robert P. George

Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/947823304500490242 (1 January 2018)
2018

Truth , Freedom