Brothers and sisters I have none . . . .

But 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. — Robert Nozick, quoted in Stephan Metcalf, The Liberty Scam: Why even Robert Nozick, the philosophical father of libertarianism, gave up on the movement he inspired.

Without a claim there can be no obligation, but there is some obligation wherever there is a claim. — William James, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life

But what makes it generally impossible for the present-day average educated man to find anything appealing in the ancient world is the total egoism of today’s private person who wants to exist as an individual and asks of the community only the greatest possible security for himself and his property, for which he pays his taxes amid sighs, and who also likes to attach himself to the community in a specific sense as an official. — Jacob Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians