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Just as the attempt to actualize liberal ideals requires ideas and arrangements unfamiliar to liberals, so the effort to make our moral experience resemble more closely what so much of moral thought already supposes it to be like calls for a practice of role defiance and role jumbling that has little place in traditional moral doctrines.

— Roberto Mangabeira Unger False Necessityː Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy (1987)

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More quotes by Roberto Mangabeira Unger

The partnership between the progressive school and the deepened democracy may help to nourish the childlike intensity of ordinary people as they grow older.

Democracy Realizedː The Progressive Alternative (1998)

In history obedience rarely pays; what pays is defiance.

The Left Alternative (2009)

Philosophy is a concentrated deployment of the transgressing facilities of the mind.

The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007)

We can, we must, jumble up the categories of reform and revolution, preferring change that, though perforce piecemeal, may, in its cumulative effect, become revolutionary.

The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007)

We cannot form and enhance personality without encouraging strong impulse and strong vision in the individual. Such impulse and such vision must seek a collective voice and a social expression.

The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Roberto Mangabeira Unger (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.