Quote

No state more extensive than the minimal state can be justified.

Robert Nozick

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
State
States
Minimal
Extensive
Justified

More quotes by Robert Nozick

Image
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
Image
No one has ever announced that because determinism is true thermostats do not control temperature.
Robert Nozick
Image
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?
Robert Nozick
Image
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
Image
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.
Robert Nozick
Image
You can't satisfy everybody especially if there are those who will be dissatisfied unless not everybody is satisfied.
Robert Nozick
Image
Utopia is a meta-utopia: the environment in which Utopian experiments may be tried out the environment in which people are free to do their own thing the environment which must, to a great extent, be realized first if more particular Utopian visions are to be realized stably.
Robert Nozick
Image
Through the evolutionary process, those who are able to engage in social cooperation of various sorts do better in survival and reproduction.
Robert Nozick
Image
Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor.
Robert Nozick
Image
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.
Robert Nozick
Image
Justice in holdings is historical it depends upon what actually has happened. We shall return to this point later.
Robert Nozick
Image
The trouble with government regulation of the market is that it prohibits capitalistic acts between consenting adults.
Robert Nozick
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Instead of trying to prove your opponent wrong, try to see in what sense he might be right.
Robert Nozick
Image
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
Image
Marxian exploitation is the exploitation of people's lack of understanding of economics.
Robert Nozick
Image
Evolutionary cosmology formulates theories in which a universe is capable of giving rise to and generating future universes out of itself, within black holes or whatever.
Robert Nozick
Image
Only the refusal to listen guarantees one against being ensnared by the truth.
Robert Nozick
Image
Whatever the practical origins of aesthetic discernment may have been, it has been used to create great works of art. When the very loftiest human creations are seen to derive from humble origins and functions, what needs revision is not our esteem for these creations but our notion of nobility.
Robert Nozick