Robert Nozick Quotes
1938 - 2002
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You can't satisfy everybody; especially if there are those who will be dissatisfied unless not everybody is satisfied.
Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework as Utopian Common Ground, p. 320 
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More Robert Nozick Quotes
The socialist society would have to forbid capitalist acts between consenting adults.
Robert Nozick— 1974 Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p.163.
When I was 15 years old, or 16, I carried around on the streets of Brooklyn a paperback copy of Plato's Republic, front cover facing outward. I had read only some of it and understood less, but I was excited by it and knew it was something wonderful.
Robert Nozick— The Examined Life (1989)
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— The Nature of Rationality (1993), Ch. V : Instrumental Rationality and Its Limits; Rationality's Imagination, p. 181
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— The Nature of Rationality (1993), Ch. V : Instrumental Rationality and Its Limits; Rationality's Imagination, p. 181
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— Ch. 2 : The State of Nature; Protective Associations, p. 14
1. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that holding.2. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in transfer, from someone else entitled to the holding, is entitled to the holding.3. No one is entitled to a holding except by (repeated) applications of 1 and 2.
Robert Nozick— Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, The Entitlement Theory, p. 151
A distribution is just if it arises from another just distribution by legitimate means.
Robert Nozick— Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, The Entitlement Theory, p. 151
Whatever arises from a just situation by just steps is itself just.
Robert Nozick— Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, The Entitlement Theory, p. 151
Justice in holdings is historical; it depends upon what actually has happened. We shall return to this point later.
Robert Nozick— Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, The Entitlement Theory, p. 152
Some people steal from others, or defraud them, or enslave them, seizing their product and preventing them from living as they choose, or forcibly exclude others from competing in exchanges. None of these are permissible modes of transition from one situation to another.
Robert Nozick— Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, The Entitlement Theory, p. 152
Whoever makes something having bought or contracted for all other held resources used in the process (transferring some of his holdings for these cooperating factors), is entitled to it. The situation is not one of something’s getting made, and there being an open question of who is to get it. Things come into the world already attached to people having entitlements over them.
Robert Nozick— Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, Patterning, p. 160
From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen.
Robert Nozick— Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, Patterning, p. 160
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— Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, Redistribution and Property Rights, p. 169
No state more extensive than the minimal state can be justified.
Robert Nozick— Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework, p. 297
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— Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework, p. 312
Some communities will be abandoned, others will struggle along, others will split, others will flourish, gain members, and be duplicated elsewhere. Each community must win and hold the voluntary adherence of its members. No pattern is imposed on everyone, and the result will be one pattern if and only if everyone voluntarily chooses to live in accordance with that pattern of community.
Robert Nozick— Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; Design Devices and Filter Devices, p. 316
Though the framework is libertarian and laissez-faire,individual communities within it need not be, and perhaps no community within it will choose to be so. Thus, the characteristics of the framework need not pervade the individual communities. In this laissez-faire system it could turn out that though they are permitted, there are no actually functioning "capitalist" institutions; or that some communities have them and others don't or some communities have some of them, or what you will.
Robert Nozick— Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework as Utopian Common Ground, p. 320
It goes without saying that any persons may attempt to unite kindred spirits, but, whatever their hopes and longings, none have the right to impose their vision of unity upon the rest.
Robert Nozick— Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework as Utopian Common Ground, p. 325
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— Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; Utopian Means and Ends, p. 327
