I think men have been done a great disservice, and now, more often than not, they are emasculated for sport. Jennifer Iannolo SOLO HQ Forum
I had an armadillo in my front yard the other day! They stink to high heaven and grunt like porn stars. Jeremy Johnson SOLOHQ Forum
Trend is not destiny. Rene Dubos A God Within
Learn and live. Edward D. Thompson Subway Sandwich TV Commercial
'Violence is the last resort of the incompetent,' [said] Isaac Asimov. Right; the competent don't wait that long. Jerry Pournelle http://www.technoir.nu/hplx/hplx-l/9703/msg00007.html
We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening. Nigel Tufnel This Is Spinal Tap
The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin The Physiology of Taste, 1825
Human motivation occurs when folks think themselves competent, to gain or keep things thought valuable, by methods thought efficient. Edward D. Thompson Ed Thompson
"My article suggests that a third state, “futuristic certainty,” exists, which is fundamentally far more akin to actuality than potentiality." G. Stolyarov II http://www.solohq.com/Forum/Dissent/0009.shtml#0
"Our civilization is perishing from an orgy of false laughter." G. Stolyarov II
Of all ignorance, the ignorance of the educated is the most dangerous. Not only are educated people likely to have more influence, they are the last people to suspect that they don't know what they are talking about when they go outside their narrow fields. Thomas Sowell http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3856
The rational argumentator will tolerate dissent and divergence from his position, though he will still seek to actively engage it; he will never ostracize another individual from his company for the mere fact of such dissent. G. Stolyarov II The Mark of the Fanatic http://www.geocities.com/rational_argumentator/fanatic.html
Politeness is not necessarily indicative of virtue. Glenn Lamont "Conspiracy review", SOLOHQ website
"I am the Howard Roark of writing." G. Stolyarov II SOLOHQ Forum
I resent the modern method of never defining ideas, and lumping totally different people into a collective by means of smears and derogatory terms. Ayn Rand Interview with Playboy
Conformity is deformity. G. Stolyarov II
The best government is self-government. Thomas Jefferson
Where's the challenge in living life with a safety net? Paul Hibbert Excerpted from a dialogue with himself.
The most intractable problem for contemporary philosophers to overcome is to learn how and when to sacrifice precision for accuracy (when the goal is to think well, nothing is more vital than accuracy). Edward D. Thompson
We are ahead of our time, and, hopefully, we have all our time ahead of us. G. Stolyarov II Remark to a Fellow Advocate of Immortality
I'll be back. I'm not afraid. Not afraid whatsoever. Martha Stewart After her sentencing today (July 16, 2004)
In 1968, on Christmas Eve, the astronauts completing a loop around the moon and coming to see the earth before them were overcome by a 'spontaneous manifestation of religious awe' and began to read the King James version of the Holy Bible and to pray. Many people were stunned by that -- and the American Atheist community was much concerned. [We learned that the] Bible readings and the prayers were printed in the flight plan [and were] carefully pre-planned for many weeks. ... [We] found out that the entire prayer business had been carefully pre-planned for months ahead in Washington, DC [and] had even been code named 'Experiment P-1'. ... We decided to take it to court for it was obviously government sponsoring of religion. ... No scientist, no civil liberties organization, no university, no Humanist, Ethical Culturalist, Rationalist, or Secularist supported us in any action. The single person to come out publicly to sustain our position was Ayn Rand. Madalyn Murray O'Hair From the October 1970 issue of the Society of Separationists Newsletter, reprinted in the April 2004 issue of American Atheists Newsletter
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. James Bovard
We cannot prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all before us, and with just as much reason. On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us? Thomas Babington Macaulay
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them. Frederick Douglass
The tyranny of the multitude is a multiplied tyranny. Edmund Burke
Any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave H. L. Mencken
Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it. Mikhail Bakunin
A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body. John Stuart Mill
If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all. Jacob Hornberger
The great conflict of the 21st century will not be between the West and terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic, not a belief. The true battle will be between modern civilization and anti-modernists; between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe their allegiance and identity to a higher authority; between those who give priority to life in this world and those who believe that human life is mere preparation for an existence beyond life; between those who believe in science, reason, and logic and those who believe that truth is revealed through Scripture and religious dogma. Terrorism will disrupt and destroy lives. But terrorism itself is not the greatest danger we face. Robert B. Reich http://www.nationalreview.com/ponnuru/ponnuru200407060831.asp
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on the article of the Constitution which grants a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. James Madison http://www.civicsandpolitics.com/tenth.html
We have rights, as individuals, to give as much of our own money as we please to charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of public money. David Crockett, Congressman 1827-35 http://www.jim.com/liberquo.htm
Now listen to me, goddamnit! The Arabs are simplying buying us! A handful of agas, shahs and emirs who despise this country and everything it stands for -- democracy, freedom, the right for me to get up on television and tell you about it -- a couple of dozen medieval fanatics are going to own where you work, where you live, what you read, what you see, your cars, your bowling alleys, your mortgages, your schools, your churches, your libraries, your kids, your whole life...! Paddy Chayefsky Howard Beale, NETWORK
Observe the false dichotomy offered; man's choice is either mindless, "instinctual" copulation - or marriage, an institution presented not as a union of passionate love, but as a relationship of "chaste intimacy", of "special personal friendship", of "discipline proper to purity", of unselfish duty, of alternating bouts with frustration and pregnancy, and of such unspeakable, Grade-B-movie-folks-next-door kind of boredom that any semi-living man would have to run, in self-preservation, to the nearest whorehouse. Ayn Rand On Living Death, a speech discussing the 1968 papal encyclical Humanae Vitae.
Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the advantage of a class, the safety of the power of the country, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute. Lord John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States … George Orwell Notes on Nationalism
Human freedom amounts to finding out what the laws of nature let us do and then in acting in concert with those laws to advance our ends. J. Roger Lee Limits on Universal Education, quoted from Education in a Free Society (ed. by Tibor Machan)
A liberal is a man who is willing to spend somebody else's money. Carter Glass (former senator of Virginia) Whitman, William B. The Quotable Politician. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2003.
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. Aesop (ca. 550 BC) Whitman William B. The Quotable Politician. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2003.
What does every religion lay claim to? The governance of human passions and of human will. Every religion is a curb, a power, a government. It comes in the name of divine law to subdue human nature. Therefore human liberty is its especial antagonist, which it is its object to vanquish. To this purpose are its mission and hope directed. Francois-Pierre-Guillaume Guizot /usr/bin/fortune -o
In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous. Robert Ingersoll
An open mind is like an open wound: easily infected and subject to rot. James Hetfield, Metallica
If we had done as the kings told us five hundred years ago, we should all have been slaves. If we had done as the priests told us, we should all have been idiots. If we had done as the doctors told us, we should all have been dead. We have been saved by disobedience. We have been saved by the splendid thing called independence, and I want to see more of it. I want to see children raised so that they will have it. Robert Ingersoll
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Arthur Conan Doyle Shanahan John M. The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time (In Two Lines or Less). New York: HarperCollins, 1999.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius. Arthur Conan Doyle Shanahan John M. The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time (In Two Lines or Less). New York: HarperCollins, 1999.
There is in a man an upwelling spring of life, energy, love, whatever you like to call it. If a course is not cut for it, it turns the ground round it into a swamp. Mark Rutherford Shanahan, John M. The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time (In Two Lines or Less). New York: HarperCollins, 1999
The essence of civlization is the orderly quest for truth, the rational perception of reality and all its facets, and the adaptation of man's behaviour to its laws. So long as we follow the path of reason we shall not move far from the lighted circle of civlization. Its enemies invariably lie among those who, for whatever motive, deny, distort, minimize, exaggerate or poison the truth, and who falsify the process of reason. Paul Johnson Enemies of Society
Men are joined by conviction, sundered by opinion. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridges even when there are no rivers. Nikita Kruschev
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