 “If I ask people whether they believe in life, they never understand what I mean. It's a bad question. It can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God. And if they say they do, then I know they don't believe in life. Why? God — whatever anyone chooses to call God — is one's highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own.”
Ayn Rand
We the Living
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplacable spark. In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to reach. The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
Ayn Rand
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
The idea of universal rights—the idea of rights that are universal to all people because they correspond to our natures as human beings, not to where we live or what our cultural background is—is an incredibly important one. This belief is being challenged by apostles of cultural relativism who refuse to accept that such rights exist. If you look at those who employ this idea, it turns out to be Robert Mugabe, the leaders of China, the leaders of Singapore, the Taliban, Ayatollah Khomeini. It is a dangerous belief that everything is relative and therefore these people should be allowed to kill because it’s their culture to kill.
Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie
Lindsay, While you know I value polite conversation and have taken you to task on several occasions for being less than...diplomatic, I'm starting to see your point of view. While I'll never sanction insulting people who don't deserve it, I take back any and all recriminations for dealing with assholes in as blunt terms as possible. You have my apologies
Ethan Dawe
http://solohq.com/Forum/NewsDiscussions/0939_6.shtml#131
Did you ever meet these rehab people? I liked them better when they were drunks! When they're drunk, they just ask you to buy them a drink. Now they've got to tell you how happy they are, how they found God ... then they've got to give you a test to see if you're an alcoholic: ... 'Do you ever find yourself looking forward to a drink? Hmmmmmm?' What kind of test is this? I look forward to eating. Does that make me a food addict? I look forward to sex. Does that make me a sex addict? I'll be honest with you: Sometimes I look forward to taking a big shit! Does that make me a shitaholic?
Jeff Wayne
It's OK To Be a White Male Comedy CD
No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.
Dean Acheson
Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
Thomas Edison
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill. I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose Free Will.
Rush
Civility in the face of evil is no virtue; rage in the face of nihilism is no vice.
Lindsay Perigo
From his essay "This Boy's Not For Turning."
What is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked?
Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Atkinson, speaking to the House of Lords last month in opposition to the Blair government's Racial and Religious Hatred Bill.
I sing from the heart... I sing the words of a song and really feel them, from the top of my head to the tip of my toes... I sing as though my life depends on it, and if I ever stop doing that then I'll stop living
Mario Lanza
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.
Denouncing masculine oppression, Women's Lib screams protests against the policy of regarding women as "sex objects"—through speakers who, too obviously, are in no such danger.
Ayn Rand
Of all enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debt and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. [...] In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect may be traced in the inequality of fortunes and the opportunities of fraud growing out of a state of war ... and in the degeneracy of manners and morals engendered by both. [...] No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
James Madison
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
Thomas Jefferson
Letter to John Adams, 11 April 1823
"Whatever is done for men takes away from the stimulus and necessity of doing things for themselves. The value of legislation as an agent in human advancement has been much over estimated. No Laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober".
Samuel Smiles
Self Help
There is a level of cowardice lower than that of a conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
Ayn Rand
A superstitious man suspects everything that is pleasant. It seems inbred in his nature, and in the nature of most people. You let such a man pull up a little weed and taste it, and if it is sweet and good, he says, "I'll bet it is poison." But if it tastes awful, so that his face becomes a mask of disgust, he says, "I'll bet you that it is good medicine."
Robert Ingersoll
When Barbara Branden was asked by a student"What will happen to the poor in an Objectivist society?" she answered "If you want to help them, you will not be stopped."
Ayn Rand
The Virtue of Selfishness
Get to know two things about a man. How he earns his money and how he spends it. You will then have the clue to his character. You will have a searchlight that shows up the inmost recesses of his soul. You know all you need to know about his standards, his motives, his driving desires, his real religion.
Robert McCracken
Investor Words Quote of the Day http://www.investorwords.com
Pardoning the Bad, is injuring the Good
Benjamin Franklin
Poor Richard's Almanac, 1748
For when men... have once surrendered their minds and have given their allegiance to the opinion of some man, they bring no enlargement to the sciences themselves, but merely act as servile functionaries and attendants to glorify certain authors...
Francis Bacon
The Great Instauration, Preface
Never underestimate the wrath of a patient man.
Anonymous
Every place outside of the USA is an absolute hellhole. As much as we can complain about the US's lack of freedom, I just can't stand when they force women to dress like BATMAN, when they leave little girls out to die. I mean, at least we address the issues of equality and freedom, which are not even addressed in a place like Egypt or China or India.Other countries are pieces of s**t, so they have a holier-than-thou attitude. I think the most insulting thing you can say about anybody is that they're more popular in another country.
Penn Jillette
Contact Music.com
I think they would have particularly liked rap music. It has the sort of effect Neanderthals would have enjoyed.
Steven Mithen
The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language and the Mind.
A can't change the laws of physics.
James Doohan as Scotty
Star Trek, "The Naked Time," 1966
Hey, fellas: there's something out there that electrocutes people on beaches, collapses buildings like cardboard, and drowns ships and villages. It's called nature. The next time the western horizon flames with crimson, remember that this is what Foucault never saw. Foucault was struck down by the elemental force he repressed and edited out of his system. Science, disdained by Foucaldians, is our only hope for controlling the retrovirus and marauding infections of AIDS. Science and society are our frail barriers against the turbulence of cruel, indifferent nature.
Camille Paglia
from the essay "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders," in her book Sex, Art, and American Culture.
Please don't feed the trolls
Adam Reed
Everywhere
The only real security is not insurance or money or a job, not a house and furniture paid for, or a retirement fund, and never is it another person. It is the skill and humor and courage within, the ability to build your own fires and find your own peace.
Audrey Sutherland
The American Republic will last only until its politicians discover that they can bribe their people with their own money.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Seen on FARK.com
There are no holidays in the fight against evil.
Don Adams as Maxwell Smart
Get Smart
I must say I am impressed with the SOLOists who have shown up here. Both in terms of intellectual seriousness and basic civility, you folks are a BIG step up from the ARI people I have encountered!
Michael Prescott
From the blog of a best-selling suspense author and one who has rejected Objectivism - http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2005/05/it_just_gets_wo.html
If you don't know what your goals are, don't be surprised when you don't attain them
Nathaniel Branden
That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you. The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen - your values and choices. That which happened by accident - what family you were born into, in what country, and where you went to school - is totally unimportant.
Ayn Rand
Just for the record, WMD was never my rationale. As I've said on many occasions, when it comes to toppling dictators, there's no such thing as an "illegitimate" rationale. In his obstruction of U.N. weapons inspectors, Saddam certainly acted as if he had WMD and, in his "trade" missions to Niger (principal exports: uranium, goats, cowpeas, and onions), as if he were eager to acquire more. There's something to be said for taking a chap at his word.
Mark Steyn
http://www.nationalreview.com/issue/steyn200511070904.asp
"I find war repugnant. All wars. I know war's monstrous aspects: blood and corpses everywhere, hungry refugees, devastated cities, orphans in tears and houses in ruins. I find no beauty in it. But it is with a heavy heart I ask this: what is to be done? Do we have the right not to intervene, when we know what passivity and appeasement will make possible?"
Elie Wiesel
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.
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
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
I use my tongue as a guide.
Jennifer Iannolo
Unlike 9/11, when the cult of victimhood was temporarily suspended in honour of the many real, actual victims under the rubble, in New Orleans everyone claimed the mantle of victim, from the incompetent mayor to the "oppressed" guys wading through the water with new DVD players under each arm. Welfare culture is bad not just because, as in Europe, it's bankrupting the state, but because it enfeebles the citizenry, it erodes self-reliance and resourcefulness.
Mark Steyn
"The Big Easy rocked, but didn't roll," The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/09/06/do0602.xml
I don't build in order to have [profits]. I have [profits] in order to build.
Ayn Rand
A bastardization of a favourite Roark quote used to settle the question of whether profits are an end in themselves. They are not.
Playboy: Has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered anything of constructive value to human life? Rand: Qua religion, no — in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusion of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason. But you must remember that religion is an early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man’s life and code of moral values, were made by religion, before man graduated or developed enough to have philosophy. And, as philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate, but in a very contradictory context and, on a very—how shall I say it?—dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith.
Ayn Rand
“Playboy’s Interview with Ayn Rand,” – ARL p 411
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
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
James Bovard
These dynamos and turbines of the Niagara Falls Power Company impressed me far more profoundly than the Cave of the Winds; are indeed, to my mind, greater and more beautiful than accidental eddying of air beside a downpour. They are will made visible, thought translated into easy and commanding things. They are clean, noiseless, starkly powerful. All the clatter and tumult of the early age of machinery is past and gone here; there is no smoke, no coal grit, no dirt at all. The wheel pit into which one descends has an almost cloistered quiet about its softly humming turbines. These are altogether noble masses of machinery, huge black slumbering monsters, great sleeping tops that engineer irresistible forces in their sleep…. A man goes to and fro quietly in the long, clean hall of the dynamos. There is no clangor, no racket…. All these great things are as silent, as wonderfully made, as the heart in a living body, and stouter and stronger than that…. I fell into a daydream of the coming power of men, and how that power may be used by them.
H.G. Wells
Upon seeing the first great Niagara Falls power plant, which was created by Westinghouse and Tesla, among others.
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of all who threaten it.
US Navy Billboard
"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
Never argue with an idiot. They bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.
Unknown Author
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