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

Categorized in : People May Vision

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

liberty political philosophy

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

what-if strong rights

Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited, to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified, but any more extensive state will violate persons' rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right.

Robert Nozick

enforcement protection rights

You can't satisfy everybody; especially if there are those who will be dissatisfied unless not everybody is satisfied.

Robert Nozick

dissatisfied satisfied ifs

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

political use giving

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

Robert Nozick

opponents trying might

The trouble with government regulation of the market is that it prohibits capitalistic acts between consenting adults.

Robert Nozick

regulation adults government

Marxian exploitation is the exploitation of people's lack of understanding of economics.

Robert Nozick

economics understanding people

Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor.

Robert Nozick

libertarian taxation liberty

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

Robert Nozick

justified states

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

philosopher surprise imagination

What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside?

Robert Nozick

our-lives matter feels

Philosophical argument, trying to get someone to believe something whether he wants to believe it or not, is not, I have held, a nice way to behave towards someone; also it does not fit the original motivation for studying or entering philosophy. That motivation is puzzlement, curiousity, a desire to understand, not a desire to produce uniformity of belief. Most people do not want to become thought-police. The philosophical goal of explanation rather than proof not only is morally better, it is more in accord with one's philosophical motivation.

Robert Nozick

motivation nice philosophy

The socialist society would have to forbid capitalist acts between consenting adults.

Robert Nozick

capitalist socialist adults

Only the refusal to listen guarantees one against being ensnared by the truth.

Robert Nozick

refusal guarantees

A distribution is just if it arises from another just distribution by legitimate means.

Robert Nozick

distribution arise mean

Through the evolutionary process, those who are able to engage in social cooperation of various sorts do better in survival and reproduction.

Robert Nozick

engagement able survival

From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen.

Robert Nozick

chosen inspirational

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

sensitive-person wise people

Wisdom is not just knowing fundamental truths, if these are unconnected with the guidance of life or with a perspective on its meaning. If the deep truths physicists describe about the origin and functioning of the universe have little practical import and do not change our picture of the meaning of the universe and our place within it, then knowing them would not count as wisdom.

Robert Nozick

perspective knowing fundamentals