 I have to be honest with you. Islam is on very thin ice with me....Through our screaming self-pity and our conspicuous silences, we Muslims are conspiring against ourselves. We're in crisis and we're dragging the rest of the world with us. If ever there was a moment for an Islamic reformation, it's now. For the love of God, what are we doing about it?
Irshad Manji
The Trouble with Islam : A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith, 2003
"Intelligent Design" is a sham. Promote Darwin's Evolution, the REAL thing!
Manfred F. Schieder (1937 - )
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrels.
Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift
Contrary habits must be broken and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct.
Benjamin Franklin
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window.
Stephen King
Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.
Lewis Carrol
Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
Frederic Bastiat
Government
I left the world of faith, of genital cutting and forced marriage for the world of reason and sexual emancipation. After making this voyage I know that one of these two worlds is simply better than the other. Not for its gaudy gadgetry, but for its fundamental values.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Infidel
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. ... By directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention."
Adam Smith
The Wealth of Nations
The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.
Alfred Hitchcock
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Aldous Huxley
Profit motive is proper motive.
Erica Schulz
Erica Schulz
You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.
Mohandas Gandhi
To label people as death-deserving enemies because of disagreements about real world politics is bad enough. To do the same for disagreements about a delusional world inhabited by archangels, demons and imaginary friends is ludicrously tragic.
Richard Dawkins
Freedom From Religion Foundation (http://www.ffrf.org/), Madison, Wisconsin, September 2001
The Holy Prophet Mohammed came into this world and taught us -- That man is a Muslim who never hurts anyone by word or deed, but who works for the benefit and happiness of God's creatures. Belief in God is to love one's fellow men.
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifism
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I saw a singer, based in New Orleans, say on the Food Network the other day something to the effect of how the incredible generosity of people around the country after Katrina "should be something we see all the time." To which I say...Nonsense! Katrina was an epic disaster. People were in trouble, not due to their own making, and of course many outside of New Orleans were able and willing to respond with generosity, if they could. But life is not one gigantic hurricane. Life is not a hospital room, or a disaster--at least not in a free and rational country, where prosperity comes to the surface and is the norm. Life is normally without hurricanes, and even most hurricanes are not as bad as Katrina. Disaster is not the normal, usual state of mankind, and, therefore, help and generosity are not man's most important virtues. Man's most important virtues are productivity, integrity, self-responsibility and, yes, the enjoyment and happiness that these virtues allow. (These virtues also make possible generosity, by the way.) I'm sick of people, especially celebrities and politicians, trying to induce unearned guilt.
Dr. Michael Hurd
http://www.drhurd.com/
There is a stage of worship which makes the worshiper himself - an object of reverence.
Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead
We shall build good ships here. At a profit — if we can. At a loss — if we must. But always good ships.
Collis P. Huntington
On founding the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company.
... certainly in the Bush era, the republican -- standard republican -- party is becoming less and less friendly to libertarian ideas. There is just practically nothing libertarian about George Bush, with the possible exception of tax cuts. But when tax cuts are not linked with spending cuts, which they've not been with Bush, it's not so much libertarian as, as fobbing off a responsibility on a later generation.
Brian Doherty
http://www.booktv.org/feature/index.asp?segID=7933&schedID=475
"With great power, comes great responsibility. With great responsibility, comes great honor. With great honor, comes great pride. With great pride, comes a great life."
Warren Chase Anspaugh
The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence. All initiation of force is a violation of someone else's rights, whether initiated by an individual or the state, for the benefit of an individual or group of individuals, even if it's supposed to be for the benefit of another individual or group of individuals. Legitimate use of violence can only be that which is required in self-defense.
Ron Paul
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ron_Paul
In the spiritual realm, the currency--which exists in limited quantity and must be teleologically measured in the pursuit of any value--is time, i.e., one's life. Since a value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep, and the amount of possible action is limited by the duration of one's lifespan, it is part of one's life that one invests in everything one values.
Ayn Rand
Rand, A. (1966, 1990). Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded second edition. New York: Meridian. p 34.
The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it. And a state which postpones the interest of their mental expansion and elevation to a little more of an administrative skill, of that semblance of which practice gives in the details of business, a state which dwarves its men in order that they may be more docile instruments in it’s hands, even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished, and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything will in the end avail it nothing. For want of the vital power, which in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.
John Stuart Mill
Man's consciousness is his least known and most abused vital organ. Most people believe that consciousness as such is some sort of indeterminate faculty which has no nature, no specific identity and therefore no requirements, no needs, no rules for being properly or improperly used.... Men abuse, subvert and starve their consciousness in a manner they would not dream of applying to their hair, toenails or stomachs. They know that these things have a specific identity and specific requirements, and, if one whishes to preserve them, one must comb one's hair, trim one's toenails and refrain from swallowing rat poison.
Ayn Rand
Our Cultural Value-Deprivation
Nobody can waste your time without your consent. If somebody wasted your time, then this is really another way of saying that you weren't focused enough, and assertive enough, to close (or limit) the conversation or interaction with the other person who allegedly 'wasted your time.' How you word things, including to yourself, can be very important. I suggest NOT saying to yourself, 'He wasted my time.' It's better to think of it as, 'I wasted my time with him.' This self-responsible wording will encourage correct thinking, i.e., thinking that assumes you have control over your life, your destiny ... and your time.
Dr. Michael Hurd
http://www.drhurd.com
Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction.
Ayn Rand
All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God
Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire
Life is the ultimate value and is constituted of a passing series of moments. To waste time is to waste life and thus to commit slow suicide.
Luke Setzer
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/GeneralForum/1000.shtml#6
If you can't scratch your own itch, the free market will.
Neil McAllister
"Man's Search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a 'secondary rationalization' of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning... Man, however, is able to live and even to die for the sake of his ideals and values!"
Victor Frankl
Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive... then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Howard_Thurman
The trick is not how much pain you feel - but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.
Erica Jong
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Erica_Jong
There is no such thing as Objectivism
Ayn Rand
The Art of Nonfiction, p 27
Security is mostly a superstition... Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
Helen Keller
Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end.
Unknown
Forwarded by a friend
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
Winston Churchill
I'm not asking you to change your mind. I'm asking you to change your mouth.
Sexual Harassment Trainer
Mandatory Sexual Harassment Training Course Video
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Leo Tolstoy
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
Dalai Lama
Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.
Dale Carnegie
Negotiations without arms are like music books without instruments.
Aesop (ca. 550 BC)
Frederick the Great, the 18th century Prussian monarch and gifted musician and favorite quote of Robert Gates
"They took out Saddam Hussein and they hanged him, for good or worse. It's not up to me to judge any government, but that gentleman was the president of that country."
Hugo Chavez
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/01/21/D8MPUDV00.html
Besides, every means is a sub-end.
Ayn Rand
Mayhew, R. (Ed.). (1995). Ayn Rand's Marginalia. (p. 123) New Milford: Second Renaissance Books.
You are what you eat, drink, breathe, think, say and do
Patricia Bragg
Bragg Apple Cider Vinegar
Assume, man as man and his relationship to the world as a human one, and you can exchange love only for love, confidence for confidence, etc. If you wish to enjoy art, you must be an artistically trained person; if you wish to have influence on other people, you must be a person who has a really stimulating and furthering influence on other people. Every one of your relationships to man and to nature must be a definite expression of your REAL, INDIVIDUAL life corresponding to the object of your will. If you love without calling forth love, that is, if your love as such does not produce love, if by means of an EXPRESSION OF LIFE as a loving person you do not make of yourself a LOVED PERSON, then your love is impotent, a misfortune.
Erich Fromm
The Art of Loving
You're always with yourself, so you might as well enjoy the company.
Diane von Fürstenberg
Vogue
You don't have to believe in atheism, because atheism is based on REASON.
Manfred F. Schieder (1937 - )
Schieder's own mind.
The more perfect a thing is, the more susceptible to good and bad treatment it is.
Dante Alighieri
http://www.worldofquotes.com/topic/perfection/index.html
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/antoine_de_saintexupery.html
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