1001Philosophers

Robert Nozick Quotes on Freedom

Robert Nozick was an American philosopher and a longtime professor at Harvard. This page collects quotes attributed to Robert Nozick on the topic of freedom, drawn from across the philosopher's works.

Quotes

  • “Whatever arises from a just situation by just steps is itself just.”

    Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, The Entitlement Theory, p. 151
  • “The minimal state is the most extensive state that can be justified.”

    Preface, p. ix
  • “There is no social entity with a good that undergoes some sacrifice for its own good. There are only individual people, with their own individual lives.”

    Ch. 3 : Moral Constraints and the State; Why Side Constraints?, p. 32
  • “Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor.”

    Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, Redistribution and Property Rights, p. 169
  • “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.”

    Anarchy, State, and Utopia(1974) | Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework, p. 312

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