 The great power of the project is that it's absolutely irrational. And that disturbs, angers the sound human perception of a capitalist society. That is also a part of the project, this is the idea of the project, to put in doubt all the values.
Christo
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/goldblatt200404080824.asp
Just as a man who will eat anything so long as and only if it is green will fail to differentiate lettuce from poison ivy, so will the traditionalist fail to separate good from evil.
G. Stolyarov II
Hazing, Collectivism, and Traditionalism
And death shall be no more. Death, thou shalt die.
John Donne
Death, Be Not Proud
If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
Milton Friedman
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
Milton Friedman
A society that puts equality...ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.
Milton Friedman
A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
Robert A. Heinlein
He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.
Arthur Schopenhauer
It makes no difference whether government controls allegedly favor the interests of labor or business, of the poor or the rich, of a special class or a special race: the results are the same. The notion that a dictatorship can benefit any one social group at the expense of others is a worn remnant of the Marxist mythology of class warfare, refuted by half a century of factual evidence. All men are victims and losers under a dictatorship; nobody wins-except the ruling clique.
Ayn Rand
Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep.
Eric Hoffer
The less government we have, the better-- the fewer laws and the less confided power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essays
Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.
Francis Bacon
Essays
No pleasure is comparable to standing on the vantage ground of truth.
Francis Bacon
Essays
Never esteem anything as of advantage to thee that shall make thee break thy word or lose thy self-respect.
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations
A man should be upright, not be kept upright.
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations
Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-Reliance
If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.
Thomas Sowell
The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.
Thomas Sowell
Republicans believe every day is 4th of July, but Democrats believe every day is April 15.
Ronald Reagan
Attributed
A moral revolution is the most difficult, the most demanding, the most radical form of rebellion, but that is the task to be done, if you choose to accept it…. Civilization does not have to perish. The brutes are winning only by default.
Ayn Rand
Philosophy: Who Needs It
Ecology is to biology what astrology is to astronomy.
G. Stolyarov II
Injecting parasitism into one’s life is like injecting a prostitute into one’s marriage.
Professor Stephen Hicks
Ayn Rand & Contemporary Business Ethics
The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He alone is great and happy who requires neither to command nor to obey in order to secure his being of some importance in the world.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is ridiculous to lay the blame of our wrong actions upon external causes, rather than on the facility with which we ourselves are caught by such causes.
Aristotle
The bad man is continually at war with, and in opposition to, himself.
Aristotle
...conscience imperatively demands a corresponding measure of personal liberty...With this no human authority can be permitted to interfere. We are bound to extend to the utmost, and to guard from every encroachment, the sphere in which we can act in obedience to the sole voice of conscience, regardless of any other consideration.
Lord John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Acton.html
...obscure ethics imply imperfect liberty. For liberty comes not with any ethical system, but with a very developed one.
Lord John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Acton.html
Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control...
Lord John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Acton.html
Under the specious pretext of effecting 'the happiness of the whole community,' nearly all the wrongs and intrusions of government have been carried through. . . .
Walt Whitman
http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Whitman.html
...those who are guilty of such sweeping criticisms [of the rich] do not know how many people would be made poor, and how much sufering would result, if wealthy people were to part all at once with any large proportion of their wealth in a way to disorganize and cripple great business enterprises.
Booker T. Washington
An intellectual who scorns politics is like a mathematician who scorns numbers. He does not count.
G. Stolyarov II
No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized.
Booker T. Washington
I have never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed. I have always had high regard for the man who could tell me how to succeed.
Booker T. Washington
. . . we shall make a fatal error if we yield to the temptation of believing that mere opposition to our wrongs, and the simple utterance of complaint, will take the place of progressive, constructive action, which must constitute the bedrock of all true civilization . . .
Booker T. Washington
. . . whenever people act upon the idea that the disadvantage of one man is the good of another, there slavery exists.
Booker T. Washington
People who send me letters or e-mails containing belligerent personal attacks probably have no idea how reassuring their messages are, for they show that critics seldom have any rational arguments to offer.
Thomas Sowell
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3580
The government under laissez-faire is lazy, but fair.
G. Stolyarov II
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt
Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature. . . . [I]f the next centennial does not find us a great nation . . . it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.
James Garfield
"A Century of Congress" published in Atlantic, July 1877
War is the remedy our enemies have chosen, and I say let's give them all they want.
William Tecumseh Sherman
...protection...takes from one man's pocket, and allows him to compensate himself by taking an equivalent from another man's pocket, and if that goes on in a circle through the whole community, it is only a clumsy process of robbing all to enrich none, and simply has this effect, that it ties up the hands of industry in all directions.
Richard Cobden
http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Cobden.html
Peace will come to earth when the people have more to do with each other and governments less.
Richard Cobden
http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Cobden.html
In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
Edmund Burke
http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Burke.html
What are we to think of a people who never seem to suspect that reciprocal plunder is no less plunder because it is reciprocal; that it is no less criminal because it is executed legally and with order?
Claude Frederic Bastiat
Government
For ourselves, we consider that Government is and ought to be nothing but the united power of the people, organized, not to be an instrument of oppression and mutual plunder among citizens, but, on the contrary, to secure to every one his own, and to cause justice and security to reign.
Claude Frederic Bastiat
Government
Thus the public has two hopes, and Government makes two promises--many benefits and no taxes. Hopes and promises, which, being contradictory, can never be realized. The contradiction is forever starting up before it; if it would be philanthropic, it must attend to its exchequer; if it neglects its exchequer, it must abstain from being philanthropic.
Claude Frederic Bastiat
Government
This will be the best security for maintaining our liberties. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins.
Benjamin Franklin
http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Ben_Franklin.html
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
Benjamin Franklin
http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Ben_Franklin.html
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Benjamin Franklin
http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Ben_Franklin.html
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