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Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?

Robert Nozick

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Robert Nozick
Age: 63 †
Born: 1938
Born: November 16
Died: 2002
Died: January 23
Philosopher
Political Scientist
University Teacher
Brooklyn
New York
Robert Edwin Nozick
Without
State
Individuals
Much
Individual
Group
Things
Strong
Groups
Violating
States
Room
Officials
Anything
Rooms
Libertarian
May
Leave
Reaching
Persons
Question
Raise
Person
Rights
Raises

More quotes by Robert Nozick

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Justice in holdings is historical it depends upon what actually has happened. We shall return to this point later.
Robert Nozick
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The scientists often have more unfettered imaginations than current philosophers do. Relativity theory came as a complete surprise to philosophers, and so did quantum mechanics, and so did other things.
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Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities.
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In a free system any large, popular, revolutionary movement should be able to bring about its ends by such a voluntary process. As more and more people see how it works more and more will wish to participate in or support it. And so it will grow, without being necessary to force everyone or a majority or anyone into the pattern.
Robert Nozick
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Marxian exploitation is the exploitation of people's lack of understanding of economics.
Robert Nozick
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And although it might be best of all to be Socrates satisfied, having both happiness and depth, we would give up some happiness in order to gain the depth.
Robert Nozick
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Instead of trying to prove your opponent wrong, try to see in what sense he might be right.
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Is there really someone who, searching for a group of wise and sensitive persons to regulate him for his own good, would choose that group of people that constitute the membership of both houses of Congress?
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I guess my tendency is to think essentially that the new wrinkles won't do the job if the old major idea didn't, and so you have to try something different. Then maybe they can all be combined in some coherent piece.
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No state more extensive than the minimal state can be justified.
Robert Nozick
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You can't satisfy everybody especially if there are those who will be dissatisfied unless not everybody is satisfied.
Robert Nozick
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What hadn't been realized in the literature until now is that merely to describe how severely something has been tested in the past itself embodies inductive assumptions, even as a statement about the past.
Robert Nozick
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Our principles fix what our life stands for, our aims create the light our life is bathed in, and our rationality, both individual and coordinate, defines and symbolizes the distance we have come from mere animality. It is by these means that our lives come to more than what they instrumentally yield. And by meaning more, our lives yield more.
Robert Nozick
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Through the evolutionary process, those who are able to engage in social cooperation of various sorts do better in survival and reproduction.
Robert Nozick
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The illegitimate use of a state by economic interests for their own ends is based upon a preexisting illegitimate power of the state to enrich some persons at the expense of others. Eliminate that illegitimate power of giving differential economic benefits and you eliminate or drastically restrict the motive for wanting political influence.
Robert Nozick
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Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor.
Robert Nozick
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It is, from another angle, an attack on requiring proof in philosophy. And it's also the case, I guess, that my temperament is to like interesting, new, bold ideas, and to try and generate them.
Robert Nozick
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Whatever arises from a just situation by just steps is itself just.
Robert Nozick
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No one has ever announced that because determinism is true thermostats do not control temperature.
Robert Nozick
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There is room for words on subjects other than last words.
Robert Nozick