 Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-Reliance, 1841
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
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.
Theodosius Dobzhansky
Amer. Bio Teacher 35:125-129 (1973)
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
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
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
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
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.
I gave you life so that you could live it.
Nia Vardalos
Mother to daughter in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"
May you live all the days of your life.
Jonathan Swift
Mysticism joins and unites; reason divides and separates. People crave belonging more than understanding. Hence, the prominent role of mysticism, and the limited role of reason, in human affairs.
Thomas S. Szasz
Wilcox, L. and George, J. Be Reasonable. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1994.
Cuisine is both an art and a science: it is an art when it strives to bring about the realization of the true and the beautiful, called le bon (the good) in the order of culinary ideas. As a science, it respects chemistry, physics and natural history. Its axioms are called aphorisms, its theorems recipes, and its philosophy gastronomy.
Lucien Tiendret
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."
Alexander Tyler
We are called the nation of inventors. And we are. We could still claim that title and wear its loftiest honors if we had stopped with the first thing we ever invented, which was human liberty.
Mark Twain
Foreign Critics Speech, 1890
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
Thomas Jefferson
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_jefferson.html
Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power.
Benjamin Franklin
Poor Richard's Almanac, 1738
Life is a process of breaking down and using other matter, and if need be, other life. Therefore, life is aggression, and successful life is successful aggression. Life is the scum of matter, and people are the scum of life. There is nothing but matter, forces, space and time, which together make power. Nothing matters, except what matters to you. Might makes right, and power makes freedom. You are free to do whatever is in your power, and if you want to survive and thrive you had better do whatever is in your interests. If your interests conflict with those of others, let the others pit their power against yours, everyone for theirselves. If your interests coincide with those of others, let them work together with you, and against the rest. We are what we eat, and we eat everything. All that you really value, and the goodness and truth and beauty of life, have their roots in this apparently barren soil.
Ken MacLeod
The Cassini Division
Price is what you pay. Value is what you receive.
Warren Buffett
Sister Mary Barbed-wire had been the Catholic equivalent of a Baptist hellfire preacher, always harping on the awful punishments awaiting sinners, all the horrors the God of Love would inflict upon those who disappointed Him. Everlasting suffering for missing mass on Sunday, or failing to make your Easter duty. Little Gia bought the whole package, living in terror of dying with a mortal sin on her soul.
F. Paul Wilson
The Haunted Air: A Repairman Jack Novel
I'm the type who needs to know. I didn't ask to be this way, but that's how it is. I am simply not capable of adjusting my whole existence to accommodate something that must be accepted on faith, on the word of people I've never met, people who've been dead for thousands of years. I can't live like that. It's not me.
F. Paul Wilson
The Haunted Air: A Repairman Jack Novel
SOLO has lit Objectivism on fire.
Julia Duncan Brent
SOLO Exec Loop
O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!
Thomas Paine
Common Sense
I don’t like bullshiters, I don’t like schmoozers and I don’t like arselickers.
Sir Alan Sugar (The Apprentice)
The fact that some people, like Bidinotto's environmentalists, might value the natural world so much as to accept human death for it is not an example of an outlier ethical system, but of one that simply differs in values from Bidinotto's.
Matt Singer
New West, a Montana blog: http://www.newwest.net/index.php/topic/article/1254/C38/L38#comments
Innocence is its own defense.
Benjamin Franklin
Poor Richard's Almanac, 1733
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The highwayman does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.
Lysander Spooner
"No Treason"
"Throughout human history, all evil, all sin and indeed all suffering is ultimately a product of human pride and self-conceit. At the same time, all heroism, all virtue, all true progress is ultimately a product of humility and self-sacrifice, from the obedience of Abraham and Moses, to the courage of Jesus on the cross."
Tom DeLay
Thinking must never submit itself, neither to a dogma, nor to a party, nor to a passion, nor to an interest, nor to a preconceived idea, nor to whatever it may be, if not to facts themselves, because, for it, to submit would be to cease to be.
Henri Poincaré
wikiqoute
"We are young, wandering the face of the Earth, wondering what our dreams might be worth, learning that we're only immortal for a limited time."
Neil Peart
"Dreamline" from Rush's ROLL THE BONES
Since we know that virtue is the means for achieving values, then perfect virtue should give us perfect happiness -- and the closer we get to perfect virtue the closer we get to purr-fect happiness.
David Elmore
Solo - Moral Perfection Thread
"Dad," I said, "I want to go to the Moon." "Certainly," he answered . . . . "I said it was all right. Go ahead." "Yes . . . but how?" "Eh?" He looked mildly surprised. "Why, that's your problem, Clifford."
Robert A. Heinlein
Have Space Suit Will Travel
The key thing to remember is that what is history to us, was politics to them. We have the benefit of hindsight; we know how it all came out. But if we really want to learn from history, we have to try to understand, not just what happened, but how it appeared to the people who lived at the time.
Ron Merrill
http://solohq.com/Articles/RonMerrill/The_Radicalism_of_Objectivism.shtml
Humorlessness should be grounds for dismissal.
Camille Paglia
"Junk Bond & Corporate Raiders," on her remedy to reform academe
Double-posts are bastard children of the troubled mind.
Alec Mouhibian
... you can't allow "market competition" over the very definitions and meanings of such basic legal principles as "justice," "rights," "aggression," "self-defense," etc.
Robert James Bidinotto
From "Contra Anarchism, Part III," in discussing the social need for government and law.
The State calls the violence of the individual 'crime.' Its own violence it calls 'law.'
Max Stirner
The Ego & Its Own
It took Chuck and me at least two hours of hard climbing to reach the top of the [Great Pyramid]. ... As the sun came up and we could hear the desert and the city below, I experienced one of the most incredible feelings I've ever had -- that feeling I so often describe as the 'peak of aliveness.' ... In life, it is possible to lose your money, your home, or your spouse, but the memories, the excitement, and the emotions associated with the accomplishment of any of your dreams can never be taken away from you.
Charles Givens
SuperSelf
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Since moral perfection for Aristotle means (1) willfully exercising phronesis to understand and acknowledge that orthos logos which in any given situation specifies the conduct most conducive to the achievement of one's own eudaimonia, (2) willfully choosing to act in accordance with the conduct specified by the orthos logos such that one's genuine eudaimonia will best be achieved, and (3) developing both (1) and (2) to the point where one characteristically exercises phronesis and acts in accordance with the orthos logos as a matter of habit--moral perfection being, therefore, to always act in accordance with one's own best interests--the crown of virtues for Aristotle, the final proof of one's own moral perfection, is pride in being egoistic. One is morally perfect to the extent one is perfectly egoistic and vice versa. To take pride in being morally/egoistically perfect is for Aristotle the ultimate moral achievement for man.
Jack Wheeler
Den Uyl, Douglas J., and Douglas B. Rasmussen, eds. The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1984.
But as Ayn Rand memorably said at a party I attended in 1962, in response to complaints that "taxes are too high" (then 20%), "Pay 80% if you need it for defense." It is not the amount but the purpose served that decides what is "too much."
John Hospers
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/1004/1004openletter.htm
Data: The B-4 is physically identical to me, although his neural pathways are not as advanced. But even if they were, he would not be me.
Picard: How can you be sure?
Data: I aspire, sir. To be better than I am. The B-4 does not.
Star Trek: Nemesis
Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional "next world" is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them.
Richard Dawkins
Salon
People who mind other people's business do not have good enough business of their own to mind.
Leslie Munoz
Response to a nosy third party during her 1990 courtship with future husband Luther Setzer when asked for intimate details of their relationship.
If men were like ants, there would be no interest in human freedom. If individual men, like ants, were uniform, interchangeable, devoid of specific personality traits of their own, then who would care whether they were free or not? Who, indeed, would care if they lived or died? The glory of the human race is the uniqueness of each individual, the fact that every person, though similar in many ways to others, possesses a completely individuated personality of his own. It is the fact of each person's uniqueness—the fact that no two people can be wholly interchangeable—that makes each and every man irreplaceable and that makes us care whether he lives or dies, whether he is happy or oppressed. And, finally, it is the fact that these unique personalities need freedom for their full development that constitutes one of the major arguments for a free society.
Murray N. Rothbard
Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism and the Division of Labor
I think magic is whatever the individual defines it to be. I say it’s all magic.
David Blaine
Comcast Entertainment News
You can't reason with a cold hard wind, all you can do is not let it in.
Jules Shear and Steve Booker
Cold Hard Wind
"Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them."
Joesph Heller
Catch-22
Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption."
John Stuart Mill
When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bike. I realized that The Lord doesn't work that way, so I stole one and asked him to forgive me.
Peter Kay
Peter Kay
Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.
Random Internet E-Mail prankster
Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
Aristotle
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