Robert Nozick Quotes on Life
Robert Nozick was an American philosopher and a longtime professor at Harvard. This page collects quotes attributed to Robert Nozick on the topic of life, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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“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 -
Attributed to Robert Nozick:
“Plug into an experience machine and you will not have lived a real life.”
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Attributed to Robert Nozick:
“Philosophy is not just doctrine; it is a way of living.”
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“The Examined Life (1989)”
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. -
“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.”
The Nature of Rationality (1993), Ch. V : Instrumental Rationality and Its Limits; Rationality's Imagination, p. 181