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

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.

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

Abstraction is a mental process we use when trying to discern what is essential or relevant to a problem; it does not require a belief in abstract entities.

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.

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

Obligations may be universal or particular.

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

The government has become a mechanism for distributing largess, and your census form is your ticket.

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.

Most Europeans have no idea how wild life can be in north America.

What libertarians assert is simply that differences among normal adults do not imply different fundamental rights.

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

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

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.

The first census in 1790 asked just six questions: the name of the head of the household, the number of free white males older than 16, the number of free white males younger than 16, the number of free white females, the number of other free persons, and the number of slaves.

If an individual is born with the obligation to obey, who is born with the right to command?

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

Libertarians argue that no normal adult has the right to impose choices on other normal adults, except in abnormal circumstances, such as when one person finds another unconscious and administers medical assistance or calls an ambulance.

Libertarians recognize the difference between adults and children, as well as differences between normal adults and adults who are insane or mentally hindered or retarded.

Group personification obscures, rather than illuminates, important political questions.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.

Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.

Achievement is not always success, while reputed failure often is. It is honest endeavor, persistent effort to do the best possible under any and all circumstances.

I came from poverty and was part of those circumstances.

Great joy, especially after a sudden change of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue.

Historical methodology, as I see it, is a product of common sense applied to circumstances.

Planets are too dim to be detected with existing equipment, far away, except in these very special circumstances where they're seen by their gravitational effect.

Because of our social circumstances, male and female are really two cultures and their life experiences are utterly different.

A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.

Let everyone regulate his conduct... by the golden rule of doing to others as in similar circumstances we would have them do to us, and the path of duty will be clear before him.

There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.

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

Until fighting ends and there are conditions, which allow the free expression of will by the people, there can be no elections and elections are not held in these circumstances anywhere in the world.

You mustn't forget the circumstances I have been brought up in, the little education I have had.

Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live.

To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances.

I do not pretend to write much of a letter. You know under what circumstances I am writing.

Instead of focusing on that circumstances that you cannot change - focus strongly and powerfully on the circumstances that you can.

It may be an extreme example brought about by abnormal circumstances - but the criteria of human rights kick in, surely, precisely when the conditions are extreme and the situation is abnormal.

Circumstances don't make a person; they reveal him or her.

To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.

It must inquire not merely about the circumstances of the time in general, but in particular about the writer's position with regard to these things, the interests and motives, the leading ideas of his literary activity.

The nature of the task needs to be renewed so people just don't feel that all the hard work is in the same groove all the time, under the same circumstances and in the same environment.

Privacy under what circumstance? Privacy at home under what circumstances? You have more privacy if everyone's illiterate, but you wouldn't really call that privacy. That's ignorance.

In specific circumstances the period of aging decline can set in earlier in a particular organ than in the organism as a whole which, in a certain general or theoretical sense, is left a cripple or invalid.

Justice is a certain rectitude of mind whereby a man does what he ought to do in the circumstances confronting him.

It will be quite satisfactory if you open them gradually, as the circumstances may require; but the President assures you that this will not be the case if you make a treaty with England first.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.