 May you live all the days of your life.
Jonathan Swift
I gave you life so that you could live it.
Nia Vardalos
Mother to daughter in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"
Any power must be the enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual ... All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development according to the individual.
Albert Einstein
Wilcox L. and George J. Be Reasonable. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1994.
What drives me to despair is not the dishonesty of the charlatans who peddle such tosh, but the dopey gullibility of the thousands of nice, well meaning people who flock to the cinema and believe it.
Richard Dawkins
While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf. Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome.
George H.W. Bush
A World Transformed, 1998
Overly "permissive" parents tend to produce highly anxious children. By this I mean parents who back away from any leadership role; who treat all family members as equal not only in dignity but also in knowledge and authority; and who strive to teach no values and uphold no standards for fear of "imposing" their "biases" on their children.
Nathaniel Branden
Six Pillars of Self Esteem
I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning. Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.
George Galloway
Testimony before the US Senate, 05/17/05
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.
Theodosius Dobzhansky
Amer. Bio Teacher 35:125-129 (1973)
Where is it that I was reading about a man condemned to death who thought or said an hour before his death that if he had to live some where on a crag, on a cliff, on a narrow ledge where his two feet could hardly stand, and all around him there would be the abyss, the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, and an everlasting storm, and he had to remain like that—standing on a square yard of space—all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it would still be better to live like that than to die at the moment. To live and to live and to live and to live! No matter how you live, if only to live.
Fyodor M. Dostoevsky
Crime and Punishment
Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-Reliance, 1841
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The trick is to listen to your 'inner grandmother.' She's got a little more wisdom than your inner child.
Loretta LaRoche
Life Is Not a Stress Rehearsal
Only the Sith deal in absolutes
Obi Wan Kenobi to Darth Vader
Star Wars III - Revenge of the Sith
If passion drives, let reason hold the reins.
Benjamin Franklin
Poor Richard's Almanac, 1749
I am in favor of federally funded stem-cell research for the same reason that I
am in favor of teaching evolution in public schools. Ideally, the US government
would fund neither medical research nor education--but given that it does so,
its actions must be ruled by reason, not by an effort to promote or enforce the
superstitious restrictions of any particular strain of religious mysticism.... As a symbolic issue, to spend billions on medical research while
exempting this one area sends the same message the president will send if he
uses his first and only veto to block this bill: that enforcing religious
restrictions is the government's highest priority.
Robert Tracinski
TIADaily
Yep, that system of socialism and touchy-feely public education really seems to be working out. Just like Darwin said it would.
Mr. Lion
"And the Darwin Award goes to..." (post from Capitalist Lion)
Morality gains all of its ground out of the actualization of individual life. Only by reference to this individual actualization can moral judgment gain prescriptive ground.
Edward D. Thompson
http://solohq.com/Forum/NewsDiscussions/0712.shtml#5
Man moves from knowledge to more advanced knowledge, automatizing his identifications and discoveries as he proceeds--turning his brain into an ever more efficacious instrument, if and to the extent that he continues the growth process.
Nathaniel Branden
The Psychology of Self-Esteem
I use my tongue as a guide.
Jennifer Iannolo
I'm not a slut; I'm just sexually generous.
Jason Dixon
Never argue with an idiot. They bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.
Unknown Author
"Hitler's holocaust 6 million, Stalin's famine and terror 8 million, and Mao's famine 30 million. But the greens have topped them all. In a single crime they have killed about 50 million people. In purely numerical terms, it was the worst crime of the 20th century. It took place in the USA in 1972. It was the banning of DDT.
Andrew Kenny
The Spectator
"Greatnessis a transitory experience...It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him."
Frank Herbert
"Collected Sayings of the Muad' Dib" -DUNE
I quit when the court of appeals reversed my ruling. The purpose for which I had chosen my work, was my resolve to be a guardian of justice. But the laws they asked me to enforce made me the executor of the vilest injustice conceivable. I was asked to use force to violate the rights of disarmed men, who came before me to seek my protection for their rights. Litigants obey the verdict of a tribunal solely on the premise that there is an objective rule of conduct, which they both accept. Now I saw that one man was bound by it, but the other was not, one was to obey a rule, the other was to assert an arbitrary wish - his need - and the law was to stand on the side of the wish. Justice was to consist of upholding the unjustifiable. I quit - because I could not have borne to hear the words 'Your Honor' address to me by an honest man.
Judge Narragansett, Atlas Shrugged
http://www.loveisearned.com/html/quotations.htm
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi
http://www.loveisearned.com/html/quotations.htm
Respected Objectivists, I warn you, due to my admiration for your integrity and moral standards, not to fall into the intellectual trap that is SoloHQ, populated not by Objectivists but by post-modern nihilists/hedonists in Objectivist guise.
G. Stolyarov II
Email to Chicago Objectivist Group 05/30/05
This was a subtle but complete misunderstanding of Simonyi’s intention and practice, and it just goes to show you that if you write convoluted, dense academic prose nobody will understand it and your ideas will be misinterpreted and then the misinterpreted ideas will be ridiculed even when they weren’t your ideas.
Joel Spolsky
http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/Wrong.html
"A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry."
Bible
Ecclesiastes 8:15
Religion and war. Like mixing nitro and glycerin.
Pat Gorman
MAY 2005 Resource Consultants newsletter
"Fear is the mindkiller."
Frank Herbert
"Paul Atreides" -DUNE
In fact, instead of saying that man is the only political animal, what I perhaps should say even more sharply here is that man is the only constitutional animal.
Mortimer J. Adler
Adler M.J. The Great Ideas. Peru, Illinois: Open Court, 2000.
"Very few art works are called Spit on Shit. It's about being alive in the western world," George says. "What else?"
Gilbert and George
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1497071,00.html
When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.
Clifton Fadiman
I am so fortunate to have found, on Solo and elsewhere, people who are self-aware, women who have earned the right to be treated as equals, individuals who recognize and appreciate my value. These are the people who have everything to do with me; they enrich my life and I rejoice in their existence.
Barbara Branden
Jennifer Iannolo's New Mantra
...libertarians only get their way when the semi-paralysis of divided government occurs. Once one party dominates, government and spending grow like a cheese souffle.
Paul Chadwick
Concrete: the Human Dilemma #6, May, 2005
Scattered showers, my ass!
Noah, upon being handed the long-range weather forecast
Ancient, Apocryphal & Salacious (my accountants)
Imagine a world ...in which the principle of private ownership of the means of production is fully realized, in which there are no institutions hindering the mobility of capital, labor, and commodities, in which the laws, the courts, and the administrative officers do not discriminate against any individual or groups of individuals whether native or alien. Imagine a state of affairs in which governments are devoted exclusively to the task of protecting the individual's life, health, and property against violent aggression. In such a world the frontiers are drawn on the maps, but they do not hinder anybody from the pursuit of what he thinks will make him more prosperous. No individual is interested in the expansion of the size of his nation's territory, as he cannot derive any gain from such an aggrandizement. Conquest does not pay and war becomes obsolete.
Ludwig von Mises
Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything--and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.
Clarence Thomas
http://wid.ap.org/scotus/pdf/03-1454P.ZD1.pdf
A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years.
Johan Huizinga
The Waning of the Middle Ages
Abstainer, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary
If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters -- then all that matters is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is. What we do, now, today.
Angel
"Angel" (Epiphany)
Ethics is not a mystic fantasy — nor a social convention — nor a dispensable, subjective luxury.... Ethics is an objective, metaphysical necessity of man’s survival — not by the grace of the supernatural nor of your neighbors nor of your whims, but by the grace of reality and the nature of life.
Ayn Rand
'The Objectivist Ethics': The Virtue of Selfishness
The Patriot Act simplifiedOnce a Man said to a Horse "If I put this saddle on you, together we can hunt and kill the Wolf, our mutual enemy." The horse agreed and was saddled. After the Wolf was slain, the Horse turned to the Man and said, "Now please take the saddle off." The Man laughed, and said "No."
Unknown
If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.
Edward Hopper
For when men... have once surrendered their minds and have given their allegiance to the opinion of some man, they bring no enlargement to the sciences themselves, but merely act as servile functionaries and attendants to glorify certain authors...
Francis Bacon
The Great Instauration, Preface
There is no ultimate standard for what is legal. "Legal" is whatever we choose to make legal.
Nathan Hawking
SoloHq
At best, one can say that humans TEND to be this or that. And that is hardly a fitting basis for constructing a universal human morality.
Nathan Hawking
SoloHQ
“Man's proper stature is not one of mediocrity, failure, frustration, or defeat, but one of achievement, strength, and nobility. In short, man can and ought to be a hero.”
Mike Mentzer
“Man's proper stature is not one of mediocrity, failure, frustration, or defeat, but one of achievement, strength, and nobility. In short, man can and ought to be a hero.”
Mike Mentzer
We have inherited from our forefathers the keen longing for unified, all-embracing knowledge. The very name given to the highest institutions of learning reminds us, that from antiquity and throughout many centuries the universal aspect has been the only one to be given full credit. But the spread in both depth and width, of the multifarious branches of knowledge in the last hundred odd years has confronted us with a queer dilemma. We clearly feel that we are only now beginning to acquire reliable material for welding together the sum-total of all that is known into a whole; but on the other hand, it has become next to impossible for a single mind fully to command more than a small specialized portion of it.
Erwin Schrodinger
What is Life?
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