Robert Nozick

“How can we explain the progress of science? The traditional explanation is that scientists are disinterested seekers after truth.”

“Envy is objectionable, and we may be morally required not to act upon it.”

“I do not know of a more difficult problem in political philosophy than that of distributive justice.”

“Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights).”

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

“The minimal state is the most extensive state that can be justified. Any state more extensive violates people's rights.”

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

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

“Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities.”

“What persons may and may not do to one another limits what they may do through the apparatus of a state, or do to establish such an apparatus.”

“The fact that others intentionally contribute to my welfare does not give them a right to control me.”

“The utopian propensity, especially in its socialist version, is disastrous.”

“Love is a feeling, a sentiment, a preference, a desire. It is an emotion.”

“Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a work of political philosophy, not a work of political science.”

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