 "Public relations was invented in the United States, yet we are miserable at communicating to the rest of the world what we are about as a society and a culture, about freedom and democracy, about our policies and our goals," 
Robert Gates (US Sec'y Def)
CNN: "... enemies 'eating our lunch' online"
Big government is a national security threat: it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you'll be able to summon the will to rebuff it. We should have learned that lesson on Sept. 11, 2001, when big government flopped big-time and the only good news of the day came from the ad hoc citizen militia of Flight 93.
Mark Steyn
"The Future Belongs to Islam," MacCleans, Oct. 20, 2006
The only leverage a philosopher has is the principle of noncontradiction.
Keith Burgess-Jackson
"The Logic of Torture" -- TCS Daily -- http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=112707C
Christ appears and splits the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. And then, over a thousand years of the millennium, that the world is reigned in two places, Jerusalem and Missouri. The law will come from Missouri, and the other will be from Jerusalem...
Mitt Romney
Hitchens in Slate
"... principles shouldn't fly out the window when on the battlefield. Moreover, that might be where we need them most, where our actions will bring severe consequences one way or other. "
RoR Member 216 Jordan
"What is an Objective Justice System?" RoR Law
Human life is not equivalent to 'death prevention'
Edward D. Thompson
A Question Regarding the Objectivist Ethics
Reality does not require believing - it demands knowledge, which comes from your reasoning faculty [which is why you have it, and what it is for].... only the non-real demands believing..
Unknown Author
When you try to explain the inexplicable, then you are about to forgive the unforgivable.
Nicolas Sarkozy
The New York Sun
Education is too important to be left to government. The freer parents and entrepreneurs are, the more innovative American schooling will be — and the more children will learn.
John Stossel
Effectively packaged, nearly any idea, no matter how vile, can attract the loyalty of some.
Tibor R. Machan
Life & Property
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
I am in favor of fearmongering. As much, as and as fast as we can monger it.
Jeff Perren
Giuliani versus Paul
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
"If he advocates the right political principles for the wrong metaphysical reasons, the contradiction is his problem, not ours."
Ayn Rand
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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?
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
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
You are the true dreamers, and dreams accomplish wonderful things.
Jaime Escalante
Stand and Deliver
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 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
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
When your heart is on fire, smoke gets in your eyes.
Anonymous
Russian proverb
A toast: To the Constitution of the United States, and confusion to its enemies!
Christopher Hitchens
The New Yorker
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor consent to arbitrary measures.
Junius
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
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
How many people have died because they would not abandon their luggage?
Robert A. Heinlein
Friday
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
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
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
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
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
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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
It’s not what you think, it’s how you think that’s important.
Christopher Hitchens
Atlantic Monthly Interview
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.
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 owe the public nothing.
John Pierpont Morgan
In centuries of brotherly love, democracy and peace, the Swiss produced only the cuckoo clock.
Orson Welles
Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.
Henry David Thoreau
"Resistance to Civil Government"
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."
[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
This Don't F*** With Hitch curse actually works—look at what happened to Saddam Hussein.
Christopher Hitchens
Slate
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"
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