Top 20 Quotes by Tom G. Palmer

It is precisely because neither individuals nor small groups can be fully self-sufficient that cooperation is necessary to human survival and flourishing.

To repeat, communitarians maintain that we are constituted as persons by our particular obligations, and therefore those obligations cannot be a matter of choice.

Libertarians recognize the inevitable pluralism of the modern world and for that reason assert that individual liberty is at least part of the common good.

The reason the government sells the census as your ticket to getting goodies - rather than as your civic duty - is that distributing goodies is now all the government does.

Obviously, all of us have been influenced by those around us.

Libertarians typically argue that particular obligations, at least under normal circumstances, must be created by consent; they cannot be unilaterally imposed by others.

Guardians are necessary for children and abnormal adults, because they cannot make responsible choices for themselves.

But there is no obvious reason for holding that some normal adults are entitled to make choices for other normal adults, as paternalists of both left and right believe.

It is obvious that different individuals require different things to live good, healthy, and virtuous lives.

Equality of rights means that some people cannot simply impose obligations on others, for the moral agency and rights of those others would then be violated.