 "Leadership is not magnetic personality—that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not "making friends and influencing people"—that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations."
Peter F. Drucker
Every prescription is a description, since all statements about reality, including normative or ethical statements, are simply statements of fact - statements about what exists.
William Dwyer
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/ObjectivismQ&A/0187_2.shtml#52
Whether someone calls themselves an Objectivist is an interesting matter. I see it as offering acknowledgement to Rand's ideas and formulations. It isn't to declare allegiance to her every word, or to pretend to speak in her name. I find it interesting that those trying to maintain the purity of the philosophy end up making it incredibly difficult for people to simply acknowledge her ideas. It's like they don't want anyone to believe any part of it, or to credit any of the ideas, unless they accept it all without criticism.
Joseph Rowlands
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde
The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live,
Ayn Rand
...freedom isn't a commodity to compromise.
Captain America
Brian Michael Bendis, The New Avengers #21, August, 2006
I observed on one of the drums belonging to the marines being raised that there was painted a rattlesnake with this modest motto under it "don’t tread on me". It occurred to me that the rattlesnake, being found in no other quarter of the world besides America, might therefore be chosen to represent her. Having frequently seen the rattlesnake I ran over in my mind every property by which she was distinguished. I recollect that her eye excelled in brightness that of any other animal, and that she has no eye lids, she may therefore be esteemed an emblem of vigilance. She never begins an attack, nor when once engaged never surrenders, she is therefore en emblem of magnanimity and true courage. As if anxious to prevent all pretentions of quarreling with her the weapons with which nature has furnished her she conceals in the roof of her mouth, so that to those unacquainted with her she appears to be a most defenseless animal and even when they are shown and extended for her defense they appear weak and contemptible, but their wounds however small are decisive and fatal. Conscious of this she never wounds until she has generously given notice even to her enemy and cautioned him against the danger of treading on her. I counted the rattles ... and found them just 13, exact the number of colonies united in America, and I recollected too, that this was the only part of the snake that increases in numbers. ... Tis curious and amazing to observe how distinct and independent of each other the rattles of this animal are and yet how firmly they are united together so as to never be separated but by breaking them to pieces. One of those rattles singly is incapable of producing sound, but the ringing of thirteen together is sufficient to alarm the boldest man living. The rattlesnake is solitary and associates with her kind only when it is necessary for their preservation. In winter the warmth of a number together will preserve their lives, while singly they would probably perish. The power of fascination attributed to her by her a generous construction may be understood to mean that those who consider the liberty and blessing which America affords and once come over to her never afterwards leave her, but spend their lives with her. She strongly resembles America in this, that she is beautiful in youth and her beauty increaseth with her age, her tongue is blue and forked as the lightning, and her abode is among impenetrable rocks.
Benjamin Franklin
The Completed Autobiography
They understood that the cases were fabricated, yet they kept on working year after year. How could they? Either they forced themselves not to think (and this in itself means the ruin of a human being), and simply accepted that this was the way it had to be and that the person who gave them their orders was always right...
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago
Some films are slices of life, mine are slices of cake...drama is life with the dull bits left out."
Alfred Hitchcock
"Don't you see, Lonestar? Evil will always triumph because good is dumb."
Mel Brooks
Spaceballs
"Terrorists can do anything they like. We are businessmen, we will be going back to work. It won't hamper our business, it won't stop our work."
Dilip Khadaria
"Indian police hunt for clues to train bombers", Baku Today
Never raise your hand to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected.
Red Buttons
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead
Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Ambrose Bierce
Men will not be free until the last King is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire
Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
Ambrose Bierce
It is an ironic truth that those who seek to create systems which most assume the perfectibility of humans end up building the systems which are most soul destroying and most rigid, systems that rot from within until like great creaking rotten oak trees they collapse on top of themselves leaving a sour smell and decay. We saw it happen in 1989 with the astonishing fall of the USSR. Conversely, those systems which best take into account the complex, frail, brilliance of human nature and build in flexibility, checks and balances, and tolerance tend to survive beyond all hopes.
Adam Bosworth
http://www.adambosworth.net/archives/000031.html
If you're trying to convince us, then you need to demonstrate that you understand Objectivism before presuming to criticize it.
William Dwyer
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Dissent/0107.shtml#14
One cannot apprehend that which is automatically, until one recognizes the particulars as they are and not.
Bridget Armozel
When I was talking about science education with a friend a while back.
"The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendor that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach. But America's skyscrapers were not built by public funds nor for a public purpose: they were built by the energy, initiative and wealth of private individuals for personal profit. And, instead of impoverishing the people, these skyscrapers, as they rose higher and higher, kept raising the people's standard of living ..."
Ayn Rand
Yes, there is a Santa Claus, someone who distributes unconditional joy, and every day is Christmas. And Santa Claus is you.
Ted Keer
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/GeneralForum/0741_2.shtml#50
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray
When a psychologist or psychiatrist testifies during a defendant's competency hearing, the psychologist or psychiatrist shall wear a cone-shaped hat that is not less than two feet tall. The surface of the hat shall be imprinted with stars and lightning bolts. ... [He] shall be required to don a white beard that is not less than 18 inches in length, and shall punctuate crucial elements of his testimony by stabbing the air with a wand [and] the bailiff shall dim the courtroom lights and administer two strikes to a Chinese gong.
Duncan Scott
New Mexico State Senator, exasperated with voodoo science in the courts, proposing legislation covering state licensing guidelines for mental health professionals
I think regret is the toughest word in the English language, and one should try to live one's life so you don't feel regret.
William Shatner
I don't give a damn about my critics. I have yet to meet a good one.
Ayn Rand
The Phil Donahue Show
"One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."
George W. Bush
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/06/eveningnews/main1979106.shtml
Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.
Manuel Paleologos II
14th Century Byzantine Christian Emperor
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A 'nice' man only knows how to be agreeable. He doesn't know how to challenge women and he can't or won't set the lead. And he filters everything he says through the belief that women are fragile little flowers who need to handled with OH so much care lest they be broken. YUUCH. One more thing: women don't trust his communication because he just won't dare say anything that might offend them. Now a pleasant man is something quite different: pleasant is power, held in proper restraint and exercised with precision and elegance. A pleasant man will speak his mind, set the lead, but he also knows how to listen and show the proper degree of interest and respect. He may put himself first, but he also genuinely cares for and cares about his woman (or women). They are of great importance to him as long as they treat him right and work within the rules that he has made very clear. Most important: his world is his own. He never, NEVER makes the WOMAN his world, around which he orbits. He does allow her to come into his world and occasionally even be at the center WITH him.
Ross Jeffries
Ross Jeffries' Persuasion/Seduction Newsletters, September 20, 2006
"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."
Calvin Coolidge
It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.
Douglas MacArthur
Lots to do! Beat the Germans! Save the world! Don't forget the welfare state!
The Doctor
The Doctor Dances (Doctor Who, Season 27, Episode 10)
Just as the shepherd is superior in kind to his sheep, so, too, the shepherds of men, or, in other words, their rulers, are superior in kind to their peoples. This, according to Philo, was the argument advanced by Caligula, the Emperor, who drew from the analogy the perfectly true conclusion that either Kings are Gods or their subjects brute beasts. The reasoning of Caligula, of Hobbes, and of Grotius is fundamentally the same. Far earlier, Aristotle, too, had maintained that men are not by nature equal, but that some are born to be slaves, others to be masters. Aristotle was right: but he mistook the effect for the cause. Nothing is more certain than that a man born into a condition of slavery is a slave by nature. A slave in fetters loses everything -- even the desire to be freed from them. He grows to love his slavery, as the companions of Ulyesses grew to love their state of brutish transformation. If some men are by nature slaves, the reason is that they have been made slaves against nature. Force made the first slaves: cowardice has perpetuated the species.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Making workable choices occurs in a crucible of informative mistakes. Thus Intelligence accepts fallibility. And when absolute (infallible) choices are not known, Intelligence takes chance with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary.
Frank Herbert
Darwi Odrade character in _Chapterhouse Dune_
She's the sort of woman who lives for others -- you can tell the others by their hunted expression.
C.S. Lewis
The Screwtape Letters
In America, religion is relatively nonmystical. Religious teachers here are predominantly good, healthy materialists. They follow common sense. They would not stand in our way. The majority of religious people in this country do not accept on faith the idea of jumping into a cannibal’s pot and giving away their last shirt to the backward people of the world. Many religious leaders preach this today, because of their own leftist politics; it’s not inherent in being religious. There are many historical and philosophical connections between altruism and religion, but the function of religion in this country is not altruism. You would not find too much opposition to Objectivism among religious Americans. There are rational religious people. In fact I was pleased and astonished to discover that some religious people support Objectivism. If you want to be a full Objectivist, you cannot reconcile that with religion; but that doesn’t mean religious people cannot be individualists and fight for freedom. They can, and this country is the best proof of it.
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q&A, edited by Robert Mayhew, 2005, p. 63. (Hat tip to Michael Kelly for this reference)
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
Henry Ford
Accept the fact that the achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness—not pain or mindless self-indulgence—is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged, "This Is John Galt Speaking"
All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.
Ayn Rand
Capitalism: Who Needs It?- The Nature of Government
I never talk about myself. My work is me. I do my best, and if I like it, I hope somebody else likes it, too.
Steve Ditko
Showcase #73, April, 1968
The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Aristotle
Metaphysica
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!
Barry Goldwater
Acceptance Speech as the 1964 Republican Presidential Candidate
Freedom is not the product of our power and wealth. Our power and wealth are a product of our freedom.
Senator John McCain, R-Arizona
C-SPAN Road to the White House 2008, Annual GOPAC Dinner
If anarchy is identified with chaos, destruction and death, then the distinction between anarchy and government does not tell us much.
Kenneth N. Waltz
Anarchy and It's Consequences.
Here is Rick Warren, Grand Inquisitor, a man who can see the human race only as a vast Amway sales force for fundamentalism.
Robert Price
The Reason-Driven Life
You goddamn fool, do you think I consider their question debatable?
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged Part One Chapter VII "The Exploiters And The Exploited"
In a time of universal deception, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
There can be nothing more dreadful than that the actions of a man should be subject to the will of another.
Kant
As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naíve and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.
Fyodor M. Dostoevsky
The Brothers Karamazov
"Poverty has no cause. Only prosperity has causes."
Jane Jacobs
The Economy of Cities
Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.
Henry Ford
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