"Is not the minimal state, the framework for utopia, an inspiring vision? The minimal state treats us as inviolate individuals, who may not be used in certain ways by others as means or tools or instruments or resources; it treats us as persons having individual right with the dignity this constitutes. Treating us with respect by respecting our rights, it allows us, individually or with whom we please, to choose our life and to realize our ends and our conception of ourselves, insofar as we can, aided by the voluntary cooperation of other individuals possessing the same dignity. How dare any state or group of individuals do more. Or less."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from the United StatesPhilosophers from the United StatesMathematicians from the United StatesLibertarians from the United StatesLogicians from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; Utopia and the Minimal State, p. 333
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Nozick
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick (16 November 1938 – 23 January 2002) was an American libertarian philosopher and Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University.
36 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Robert Nozick →
Related Quotes
"When I was 15 years old, or 16, I carried around on the streets of Brooklyn a paperback copy of Plato's Republic, fro…"
"Whatever the practical origins of aesthetic discernment may have been, it has been used to create great works of art.…"
"Our principles fix what our life stands for, our aims create the light our life is bathed in, and our rationality, bo…"
"Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So s…"
"Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited, to the narrow functions of protection against…"
"Some anarchists have claimed not merely that we would be better off without a state, but that any state necessarily v…"
"Is there really someone who, searching for a group of wise and sensitive persons to regulate him for his own good, wo…"
"1. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that hol…"
"A distribution is just if it arises from another just distribution by legitimate means."
"There is no social entity with a good that undergoes some sacrifice for its own good. There are only individual peopl…"