 As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.
Vaclav Klaus
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/9deb730a-19ca-11dc-99c5-000b5df10621.html
They could not see the world beyond the mountains, there was only a void of darkness and rock … But far in the distance, on the edge of the earth, a small flame was waving in the wind, the defiantly stubborn flame of Wyatt’s torch, twisting, being torn and regaining its hold, not to be uprooted or extinguished. It seemed to be calling and waiting for the words John Galt was now to pronounce. “The road is cleared,” said Galt. “We are going back to the world.”
Ayn Rand
"Stop mixing crap and chocolate. The mix always tastes like crap."
Ross Jeffries
I don't belong to you, and you don't belong to me
George Michael
See Video Here! Freedom
All of these stars... these vast worlds that remain out of reach. If I could, I would annex other planets
Cecil John Rhodes
wikipedia
You cannot explain God with matter or chemistry or physics. You must experience Him.
Dr. Charles Dickson
Sermon at Mount Calvary Lutheran Church, Claremont, North Carolina, June 3, 2007
It’s almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that. After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it and it put the leader of that country [Hitler] in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted. The fact is that I’m not saying [Sept. 11] was a [U.S.] plan, or anything like that because, you know, that’s how they put you in the nut-ball box — dismiss you.
Rep (D) Keith Ellison
If you don't do what you love you are not going to be good at it. And if you are not good at it you are not going to make any money doing it.
Donald Trump
http://www.beautiful-landscape.com/Thoughts46.html
Know what you love and do what you love. If you don't do what you love, you're just wasting your time.
Billy Joel
From "Newsweek," according to http://www.radiantpeace.org/gallery.htm
The point of the song wasn't so much anti-Catholic as pro-lust.
Billy Joel
On "Only the Good Die Young"
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints -- the sinners are much more fun...
Billy Joel
"Only the Good Die Young"
This Don't F*** With Hitch curse actually works—look at what happened to Saddam Hussein.
Christopher Hitchens
Slate
[T]here is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.
Virginia Woolf
A Room of One's Own
If a state is governed by the principles of reason, poverty and misery are subjects of shame; if a state is not governed by the principles of reason, riches and honors are the subjects of shame.
Confucius
As quoted by Henry David Thoreau in "Resistance to Civil Government."
Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.
Henry David Thoreau
"Resistance to Civil Government"
In centuries of brotherly love, democracy and peace, the Swiss produced only the cuckoo clock.
Orson Welles
I owe the public nothing.
John Pierpont Morgan
The public be damned. I am working for my stockholders. If the public want the train, why don't they pay for it?
William H. Vanderbilt
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/06/the_public_be_d.html
I cannot say that our country could have no secret police without becoming totalitarian, but I can say with great conviction that it cannot become totalitarian without a centralized national police.
Robert H. Jackson
Wilcox, L. and George J. (1994). Be Reasonable. Buffalo: Prometheus Books. p 17.
It’s not what you think, it’s how you think that’s important.
Christopher Hitchens
Atlantic Monthly Interview
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We will not be intimidated by radical Islamic thugs...CAIR can go to Hell and they can take their 72 virgins with them.
Jason Maltera
Young America's Foundation
Islam is the only religion in the world that has a developed doctrine theology in law that mandates violence against unbelievers.
Robert Spencer
http://rebirthofreason.com/Spirit/Videos/13.shtml
If Objectivism wants to make any headway in redirecting culture, I believe that it needs to focus on how to make people want to be good rather than on having to be good.
C. Jeffery Small
Rebirth of Reason
What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and always will be thousands of princes, but there is only one Beethoven.
Ludwig van Beethoven
A wise man is not only one who begins with the end in mind; he is also one who discovers and chooses the best ends to even have in mind in the first place.
Edward D. Thompson
Ed Thompson, 08/2007
The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, 'Thus far and no farther.'
Ludwig van Beethoven
Source attributed to Kain Scalia by Phil Osborn
How many people have died because they would not abandon their luggage?
Robert A. Heinlein
Friday
People who can't remember what it's like to be kids shouldn't have them. Period.
Erica Schulz
How do you view Objectivism & Parenting
I happen to know that when bad things happen a great many people will do extraordinary things. Not because they have to, not because some calculation tells them that's the sensible thing to do but because our lives are our personal work of art. We sometimes do things because that's the beautiful thing to do. Because in the contemplation of our lives there should be beautiful things.
Mike Erickson
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Videos/0031_1.shtml#26
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor consent to arbitrary measures.
Junius
A toast: To the Constitution of the United States, and confusion to its enemies!
Christopher Hitchens
The New Yorker
When your heart is on fire, smoke gets in your eyes.
Anonymous
Russian proverb
My regard for the inventor of the harp is not made less by knowing that the instrument was very crudely constructed and still more crudely played. Rather, I admire [the inventor] more than I do the hundreds of craftsmen who in ensuing centuries have brought this art to the highest perfection. ...
Galileo Galilei
Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
You need to study ten years of primary sources and textbooks for every one year of studying philosophy actually to understand reality beyond a floating abstraction.
Ted Keer
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Banter/0220_4.shtml#84
But, after all, what is a scholar? One who may not break bounds under pain of expulsion from the academy of which he is a member.
Robert Graves
The White Goddess, p 25
You are the true dreamers, and dreams accomplish wonderful things.
Jaime Escalante
Stand and Deliver
Making someone's life "public" isn't a set up for discrimination, but for fascism
Teresa Summerlee Isanhart
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/GeneralForum/1112.shtml#12
He who asserts that everything happens by necessity can hardly find fault with one who denies that everything happens by necessity; by his own theory this very argument is voiced by necessity.
Epicurus
The Vatican Sayings
Fuel that allows fire may define what a fire entails, but it doesn't stop it from spreading to other kinds of fuel
Bridget Armozel
Does a life force or 'soul' exist?
You have a life. It’s a precious thing, and it’s yours. Make the most of it. Don’t give it up, don’t waste it on things you don’t value, regardless of what others demand from you. Work with others when you can, love and give yourself to them as they deserve—but always by the standard of what is best for your own life. The purpose of ethics is to help you find and enjoy what is best, not to sacrifice it. Pursuing your happiness, taking full responsibility for it, is a worthy and challenging task. It will take thought and effort, it will take ambition and courage, it will take everything you have, and if you succeed you will have the right to be proud, morally proud, of what you have accomplished.
David Kelley
"A Philosophy for the 21st Century." The New Individualist. Oct. 2007: 49
Slacker: One who has developed a method of operation that requires less than half the effort of the average person's, while achieving comparable results, thereby freeing up time to pursue more enjoyable activities.
Brady Lessard
Your Guide to Slide: The Slacker's Guide to College
When you think how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been...they more or less monopolize American foreign policy, as far as many people can see."
Richard Dawkins
Daniel, Johnson, NY Sun, 4 October 2007
Every form of happiness is one, every desire is driven by the same motor - by our love for a single value, for the highest potentiality of our own existence - and every achievement is an expression of it.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged - Francisco speaking to Dagny in Galt's Gulch
No, justice has not ceased to exist. How could it? It is possible for men to abandon their sight of it, and then it is justice that destroys them. But it is not possible for justice to go out of existence, because one is an attribute of the other, because justice is the act of acknowledging that which exists...
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged - Judge Narragansett speaking to Dagny
When thinkers accept those who deny the existence of thinking, as fellow thinkers of a different school of thought - it is they who achieve the destruction of the mind. They grant the enemy's basic premise, thus granting the sanction of reason to formal dementia. A basic premise is an absolute that permits no co-operation with its antithesis and tolerates no tolerance.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged - Hugh Akston speaking to Dagny
Common law is good in the way witchdoctors were once good: some of their discoveries were a primitive form of medicine, and to that extent achieved something. But once a science of medicine is established, you don't return to witchdoctors. Similarly, common law established--by tradition or inertia-- some proper principles (and some dreadful ones). But once a civilization grasps the concept of law, and particularly of a constitution, common law becomes unnecessary and should not be regarded as law. In a free society, anyone can have customs; but that's not law.
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Answers
"If he advocates the right political principles for the wrong metaphysical reasons, the contradiction is his problem, not ours."
Ayn Rand
Groups can never define the individual, although the individual can define the group (and often does so).
Bridget Armozel
http://bbs.freetalklive.com/index.php?topic=17132.msg316471#msg316471
I am in favor of fearmongering. As much, as and as fast as we can monger it.
Jeff Perren
Giuliani versus Paul
The big mystery is why so many otherwise sensible people have faith in the wondrous influence of governments. Whatever has lead them to this myth that people with guns -- such as those in the vice squads, the IRS, the government regulators and the rest -- will bring peace and justice to us all?
Tibor R. Machan
Problems with Egalitarianism
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