Mary Warnock 1924 – 2019
Helen Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock of Weeke, was a British moral philosopher and one of the most consequential public philosophers of late twentieth-century Britain. After a long career as fellow and later mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, she chaired the 1978 Committee of Enquiry into Special Educational Needs and the 1984 Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology, the Warnock Report on which set the framework for British legislation on embryo research and assisted reproduction. Her academic writings on existentialism, imagination, and ethics include Existentialism, Imagination, and An Intelligent Person's Guide to Ethics. She was a long-serving member of the House of Lords.
Key facts
- Nationality
- British
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Analytic
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Mary Warnock:
“Imagination is what makes our experience of the world meaningful.”
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Attributed to Mary Warnock:
“Public policy must be shaped by careful moral argument, not by slogans.”
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Attributed to Mary Warnock:
“Education is the means by which we hand on a civilization.”
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Attributed to Mary Warnock:
“Ethics is what we do when we do not know what to do.”
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Attributed to Mary Warnock:
“Special education must serve the unique needs of each child, not a category.”