Robert Nozick Quotes

You have tremendous flexibility in defining both the greater good and the greater community. If you don't succeed in this, then you will continue to pull that heavy wagon up the mountain, and despite the fact that you are pulling it, it will somehow run over your own foot.

Upon the principles of reason, the good of many is preferable to the good of a few or of one; a lasting good is to be preferred before a temporary, the public before the private.

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.

No decisions should ever be made without asking the question, is this for the common good?

Duty is that mode of action which constitutes the best application of the capacity of the individual to the general advantage.

To believe in 'the greater good' is to operate, necessarily, in a certain ethical suspension.

People should only profit to the extent they make other peoples lives better.

To be interested in the public good we must be disinterested, that is, not interested in goods in which our personal selves are wrapped up.

He who is unconscious of the ties which connect him with every individual of his species feels no obligation to make sacrifices for their welfare or happiness.

The idea of giving up something small for yourself to gain something big for all is not new, but putting that ancient idea into practice is the central necessity of our new age.

Seek a common good beyond your comfort.

We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community...Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own

I'm bothered when people don't understand that they have an obligation to use their best measure of devotion, of resources, to sacrifice for the common good.

Societal good comes first for me.

It’s time we framed every question - every issue -- not in terms of what’s in it for ‘me,’ but what’s in it for all of us?

Let every action aim solely at the common good.

Equip yourself for life, not solely for your own benefit, but for the benefit of the whole community

Our German language has a word which in a magnificent way denotes conduct based on this spirit: doing one's duty [Pflichterfüllung]-which means serving the community instead of contenting oneself. We have a word for the basic disposition which underlies conduct of this kind in contrast to egoism and selfishness-idealism. By 'idealism' we mean only the ability of the individual to sacrifice himself for the whole, for his fellow men.

I never know why self-sacrifice is noble. Why is it better to sacrifice oneself than someone else?

A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.

I try to persuade people to act in ways that are not only in their own interest, but in the interest of society at large.

The reason that a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the mutual destructiveness.

In everyday things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty.

The true basis of morality is utility; that is, the adaptation of our actions to the promotion of the general welfare and happiness; the endeavour so to rule our lives that we may serve and bless mankind.

Private passions tire and exhaust themselves, public ones never.