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Instead of trying to prove your opponent wrong, try to see in what sense he might be right.

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
Trying
Opponent
Opponents
Prove
Instead
Wrong
Sense
Might
Right

More quotes by Robert Nozick

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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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Only the refusal to listen guarantees one against being ensnared by the truth.
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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No state more extensive than the minimal state can be justified.
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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I think philosophers can do things akin to theoretical scientists, in that, having read about empirical data, they too can think of what hypotheses and theories might account for that data. So there's a continuity between philosophy and science in that way.
Robert Nozick
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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.
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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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
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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?
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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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
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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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Marxian exploitation is the exploitation of people's lack of understanding of economics.
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.
Robert Nozick
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There is room for words on subjects other than last words.
Robert Nozick
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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
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Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor.
Robert Nozick
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The trouble with government regulation of the market is that it prohibits capitalistic acts between consenting adults.
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