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Now Take A Human Body. Why Wouldn't You Like To See A Human Body With A Curling Tail With A Crest Of Ostrich Feathers At The End? And With Ears Shaped Like Acanthus Leaves? It Would Be Ornamental, You Know, Instead Of The Stark, Bare Ugliness We Have Now. Well, Why Don't You Like The Idea? Because It Would Be Useless And Pointless. Because The Beauty Of The Human Body Is That Is Hasn't A Single Muscle Which Doesn't Serve Its Purpose; That There's Not A Line Wasted; That Every Detail Of It Fits One Idea, The Idea Of A Man And The Life Of A Man.

-Ayn Rand

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Now Take A Human

Ayn Rand

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Now Take A Human Body. Why Wouldn't You Like To See A Human Body With A Curling Tail With A Crest Of Ostrich Feathers At The End? And With Ears Shaped Like Acanthus Leaves? It Would Be Ornamental, You Know, Instead Of The Stark, Bare Ugliness We Have Now. Well, Why Don't You Like The Idea? Because It Would Be Useless And Pointless. Because The Beauty Of The Human Body Is That Is Hasn't A Single Muscle Which Doesn't Serve Its Purpose; That There's Not A Line Wasted; That Every Detail Of It Fits One Idea, The Idea Of A Man And The Life Of A Man.

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If It Were True That Men Could Achieve Their Good By Means Of Turning Some Men Into Sacrificial Animals, And ... If I Were Asked To Serve The Interests Of Society Apart From, Above And Against My Own I Would Refuse... I Would Fight In The Full Confidence Of The Justice Of My Battle And Of A Living Being's Right To Exist.

One Of The Most Destructive Anti-concepts In The History Of Moral Philosophy Is The Term 'duty.

Doctors Are Not Servants Of Their Patients, They Are Traders Like Everyone Else In A Free Society And They Should Bear That Title Proudly Considering The Crucial Importance Of The Services They Offer.

Reality Confronts Man With A Great Many Musts, But All Of Them Are Conditional The Formula Of Realistic Necessity Is You Must, If And The If Stands For Man's Choice

Theirs Is The Banner In My Hand. And I Wish I Had The Power To Tell Them That The Despair Of Their Hearts Was Not To Be Final, And Their Night Was Not Without Hope. For The Battle They Lost Can Never Be Lost. For That Which They Died To Save Can Never Perish. Through All The Darkness, Through All The Shame Of Which Men Are Capable, The Spirit Of Man Will Remain Alive On This Earth. It May Sleep, But It Will Awaken. It May Wear Chains, But It Will Break Through. And Man Will Go On. Man, Not Men. ~equality 7-2521 (as Prometheus), Pgs 103-104

She Had Won The Battle Against Her Memories. But One Form Of Torture Remained, Untouched By The Years, The Torture Of The Word "why?

God... A Being Whose Only Definition Is That He Is Beyond Man's Power To Conceive.

Any Group Or "collective," Large Or Small, Is Only A Number Of Individuals. A Group Can Have No Rights Other Than The Rights Of Its Individual Members. In A Free Society, The "rights" Of Any Group Are Derived From The Rights Of Its Members Through Their Voluntary Individual Choice And Contractual Agreement, And Are Merely The Application Of These Individual Rights To A Specific Undertaking... A Group, As Such, Has No Rights.

Individual Choice

Most American Men Are Repressors.

I Don't Build In Order To Have Clients. I Have Clients In Order To Build.

I Think It's A Sin To Sit Down And Let Your Life Go Without Making A Try For It.

A Spirit, Too, Needs Fuel. It Can Run Dry.

Honesty Is The Recognition Of The Fact That The Unreal Is Unreal And Can Have No Value, That Neither Love Nor Fame Nor Cash Is A Value If Obtained By Fraud.

Faith Is The Commitment Of One's Consciousness To Beliefs For Which One Has No Sensory Evidence Or Rational Proof. A Mystic Is A Man Who Treats His Feelings As Tools Of Cognition. Faith Is The Equation Of Feeling With Knowledge.

You Have No Choice About Your Capacity To Feel That Something Is Good For You Or Evil, But What You Will Consider Good Or Evil, What Will Give You Joy Or Pain, What You Will Love Or Hate, Desire Or Fear, Depends On Your Standard Of Value.

It's True That There's No Such Thing As Free Will. We Can't Help What We Are Or What We Do. It's Not Our Fault. Nobody's To Blame For Anything. It's All In Your Background ... And Your Glands. If You're Good, That's No Achievement Of Yours - You Were Lucky In Your Glands. If You're Rotten, Nobody Should Punish You - You Were Unlucky, That's All.

Are You In A Universe Which Is Ruled By Natural Laws And, Therefore, Is Stable, Firm, Absolute - And Knowable? Or Are You In An Incomprehensible Chaos, A Realm Of Inexplicable Miracles, An Unpredictable, Unknowable Flux, Which Your Mind Is Impotent To Grasp? The Nature Of Your Actions - And Of Your Ambition - Will Be Different, According To Which Set Of Answers You Come To Accept.

The Worst Evil That You Can Do, Psychologically, Is To Laugh At Yourself. That Means Spitting In Your Own Face.

Contrary To The Ecologists, Nature Does Not Stand Still And Does Not Maintain The Kind Of Equilibrium That Guarantees The Survival Of Any Particular Species - Least Of All The Survival Of Her Greatest And Most Fragile Product: Man.

I Am Not Morally Obligated To Care More For A Man Than He Cares For Himself.

She Sat Leaning Back In Her Chair, Looking Ahead, Knowing That He Was As Aware Of Her As She Was Of Him. She Found Pleasure In The Special Self-consciousness It Gave Her. When She Crossed Her Legs, When She Leaned On Her Arm Against The Window Sill, When She Brushed Her Hair Off Her Forehead - Every Movement Of Her Body Was Underscored By A Feeling The Unadmitted Words For Which Were: Is He Seeing It?

I Am Not The Means To Any End Others May Wish To Accomplish. I Am Not A Tool For Their Use. I Am Not A Servant Of Their Needs. I Am Not A Bandage For Their Wounds, I Am Not A Sacrifice On Their Altars.

Capitalism Has Been Called Nationalistic - Yet It Is The Only System That Banished Ethnicity, And Made It Possible, In The United States, For Men Of Various, Formerly Antagonistic Nationalities To Live Together In Peace.

The Good, Say The Mystics Of Spirit, Is God, A Being Whose Only Definition Is That He Is Beyond Man's Power To Conceive — A Definition That Invalidates Man's Consciousness And Nullifies His Concepts Of Existence. The Good, Say The Mystics Of Muscle, Is Society — A Thing Which They Define As An Organism That Possesses No Physical Form, A Super-being Embodied In No One In Particular And Everyone In General Except Yourself.... The Purpose Of Man's Life, Say Both, Is To Become An Abject Zombie Who Serves A Purpose He Does Not Know, For Reasons He Is Not To Question.

Power-lust Is A Weed That Grows Only In The Vacant Lots Of An Abandoned Mind.

Hank, This Is Great." "yes." He Said It Simply, Openly. There Was No Flattered Pleasure In His Voice, And No Modesty. This, She Knew, Was A Tribute To Her, The Rarest One Person Could Pay Another: The Tribute Of Feeling Free To Acknowledge One's Own Greatness, Knowing That It Is Understood.

Because, You See, 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. To Imagine A Heaven And Then Not To Dream Of It, But To Demand It.

My Philosophy, In Essence, Is The Concept Of Man As A Heroic Being, With His Own Happiness As The Moral Purpose Of His Life, With Productive Achievement As His Noblest Activity, And Reason As His Only Absolute.

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A Quest For Self-respect Is Proof Of Its Lack

The Man Who Produces While Others Dispose Of His Product Is A Slave.

The Man Of Authentic Self-confidence Is The Man Who Relies On The Judgment Of His Own Mind. Such A Man Is Not Malleable; He May Be Mistaken, He May Be Fooled In A Given Instance, But He Is Inflexible In Regard To The Absolutism Of Reality, I.e., In Seeking And Demanding Truth.

I Am Not Primarily An Advocate Of Capitalism, But Of Egoism; I Am Not Primarily An Advocate Of Egoism, But Of Reason. If One Recognizes The Supremacy Of Reason And Applies It Consistently, All The Rest Follows.

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If Capitalism Had Never Existed, Any Honest Humanitarian Should Have Been Struggling To Invent It. But When You See Men Struggling To Evade Its Existence, To Misrepresent Its Nature, And To Destroy Its Last Remnants - You Maybe Sure That Whatever Their Motives, Love Of Man Is Not One Of Them.

Toohey: "mr. Roark, We're Alone Here. Why Don't You Tell Me What You Think Of Me? In Any Words You Wish. No One Will Hear Us." Roark: "but I Don't Think Of You.

This Is The Age Othe Common Man, They Tell Us-a Title Which Any Man May Claim To The Extent Osuch Distinction As He Has Managed Not To Achieve.

Every Man Builds His World In His Own Image. He Has The Power To Choose, But No Power To Escape The Necessity Of Choice.

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The Fact That A Man Has No Claim On Others ... Does Not Preclude Or Prohibit Good Will Among Men And Does Not Make It Immoral To Offer Or To Accept Voluntary, Non-sacrificial Assistance.

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When You Force A Man To Act Against His Own Choice And Judgment, It's His Thinking That You Want Him To Suspend.

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The Right To Agree With Others Is Not A Problem In Any Society; It Is The Right To Disagree That Is Crucial. It Is The Institution Of Private Property That Protects And Implements The Right To Disagree - And Thus Keeps The Road Open To Man's Most Valuable Attribute: The Creative Mind.

She Fell Asleep, Lying There, Her Hand Clasping His. Her Last Awareness, Before She Surrendered The Responsibility Of Consciousness, Was The Sense Of An Enormous Void, The Void Of A City And Of A Continent, Where She Would Never Be Able To Find The Man Whom She Had No Right To Seek.

Don't Think. Believe. Trust Your Heart, Not Your Brain. Don't Think. Feel. Believe.

Kant Is The Most Evil Man In Mankind's History.

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I Am Only Concerned With Politics So I May See The Day When I Don't Have To Be Concerned With Politics.

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The Founding Fathers Were Neither Passive, Death-worshipin G Mystics Nor Mindless, Power-seeking Looters; As A Political Group They Were A Phenomenon Unprecedented In History: They Were Thinkers Who Were Also Men Of Action.

A Conformist Is A Man Who Declares, "it's True Because Others Believe It" - But An Individualist Is Not A Man Who Declares, "it's True Because I Believe It." An Individual Declares, "i Believe It Because I See In Reason That It Is True.

An Inventor Is A Man Who Asks 'why?' Of The Universe And Lets Nothing Stand Between The Answer And His Mind.

This Was The Great Clarity Of Being Beyond Emotion, After The Reward Of Having Felt Everything One Could Feel.

Run For Your Life From Any Man Who Tells You That Money Is Evil. That Sentence Is The Leper's Bell Of An Approaching Looter. So Long As Men Live Together On Earth And Need Means To Deal With One Another--their Only Substitute, If They Abandon Money, Is The Muzzle Of A Gun.

The Man Who Refuses To Judge, Who Neither Agrees Nor Disagrees, Who Declares That There Are No Absolutes And Believes That He Escapes Responsibility, Is The Man Responsible For All The Blood That Is Now Spilled In The World

She Looked At The Crowd And She Felt Simultaneously Astonishment That They Should Stare At Her When This Event Was So Personally Her Own That No Communication About It Was Possible And A Sense Of Fitness That They Should Be Here That They Should Want To See It. Because The Sight Of An Achievement Was The Greatest Gift A Human Being Could Offer To Others.

There Were Things In My Past Which I Have Not Liked. But All The Things Of Which I Was Proud Will Remain.

Let Me Give You A Tip On A Clue To Men's Characters: The Man Who Damns Money Has Obtained It Dishonorably; The Man Who Respects It Has Earned It.

Paper Is A Check Drawn By Legal Looters Upon An Account Which Is Not Theirs: Upon The Virtue Of The Victims. Watch For The Day When It Bounces, Marked: 'account Overdrawn.'

What Is The Basic, The Essential, The Crucial Principle That Differentiates Freedom From Slavery? It Is The Principle Of Voluntary Action Versus Physical Coercion Or Compulsion.

Identify The Dominant Philosophy Of A Society And You Can Predict Its Future.

If You Get Caught At Some Crucial Point And Somebody Tells You That Your Doctrine Doesn't Make Sense - You're Ready For Him. You Tell Him There's Something Above Sense. That Here He Must Not Try To Think, He Must Feel. He Must Believe. Suspend Reason And You Can Play It Deuces Wild.

He Walked, Groping For A Sentence That Hung In His Mind As An Empty Shape. He Could Neither Fill It Or Dismiss It.

Do Not Let Your Fire Go Out, Spark By Irreplaceable 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 In Lonely Frustration For The Life You Deserved And Have Never Been Able To Reach. The World You Desire Can Be Won. It Exists.. It Is Real.. It Is Possible.. It's Yours.

America's Skyscrapers Were Not Built By Public Funds Nor For A Public Purpose: They Were Built By The Energy, Initiative And Wealth Of Private Individuals For Personal Profit. And, Instead Of Impoverishing The People, These Skyscrapers, As They Rose Higher And Higher, Kept Raising The People's Standard Of Living - Including The Inhabitants Of The Slums.

Selfishness Does Not Mean Only To Do Things For One's Self. One May Do Things, Affecting Others, For His Own Pleasure And Benefit. This Is Not Immoral, But The Highest Of Morality.

Potentially, A Government Is The Most Dangerous Threat To Man's Rights: It Holds A Legal Monopoly On The Use Of Physical Force Against Legally Disarmed Victims.

A Society That Robs An Individual Of The Product Of His Effort, Or Enslaves Him, Or Attempts To Limit The Freedom Of His Mind, Or Compels Him To Act Against His Own Rational Judgment-a Society That Sets Up A Conflict Between Its Edicts And The Requirements Of Man’s Nature—is Not, Strictly Speaking, A Society, But A Mob Held Together By Institutionalized Gang-rule.

It Is My Eyes Which See, And The Sight Of My Eyes Grants Beauty To The Earth.

Thousands Of Years Ago The First Man Discovered How To Make Fire. He Was Probably Burnt At The Stake He'd Taught His Brothers To Light, But He Left Them A Gift They Had Not Conceived And He Lifted Darkness From The Face Of The Earth.

You Must Be The Kind Of Man Who Can Get Things Done. But To Get Things Done, You Must Love The Doing, Not The Secondary Consequences.

This Miracle Of Me Is Mine To Own And Keep, And Mine To Guard, And Mine To Use, And Mine To Kneel Before.

To Hold An Unchanging Youth Is To Reach At The End, The Vision With Which One Started.

We The Living Is Not A Novel 'about Soviet Russia.' It Is A Novel About Man Against The State. Its Basic Theme Is The Sanctity Of Human Life - Using The Word 'sanctity' Not In A Mystical Sense, But In The Sense Of 'supreme Value.'

Im Waiting, For What, My Kind Of People, What Kind Is That, I Can Tell My Kind Of People By Their Faces, By Something In Their Faces.

The Mind Is The Attribute Of Man. When Man Is Born, He Comes Into Existence With Only One Weapon With Him--the Reasoning Mind.

Never Think Of Pain Or Danger Or Enemies A Moment Longer Than Is Necessary To Fight Them.

She Did Not Know The Nature Of Her Loneliness. The Only Words That Named It Were: This Is Not The World I Expected.

Each Man Must Live As An End In Himself And Follow His Own Rational Self-interest.

There Is No Such Thing As A Lousy Job - Only Lousy Men Who Don't Care To Do It.

Creation Comes Before Distribution -- Or There Will Be Nothing To Distribute.

I Loathe Your Ideals Because I Know No Worse Injustice Than The Giving Of The Undeserved.

A “collective” Mind Does Not Exist. It Is Merely The Sum Of Endless Numbers Of Individual Minds. If We Have An Endless Number Of Individual Minds Who Are Weak, Meek, Submissive And Impotent – Who Renounce Their Creative Supremacy For The Sake Of The “whole” And Accept Humbly That The “whole’s” Verdict – We Don’t Get A Collective Super-brain. We Get Only The Weak, Meek, Submissive And Impotent Collective Mind.

You Know, I Think That Only If One Feels Immensely Important Can One Feel Truly Light.

So Long As Men Desire To Live Together, No Man May Initiate The Use Of Physical Force Against Others. . . . When A Man Attempts To Deal With Me By Force, I Answer Him By Force. It Is Only As Retaliation That Force May Be Used And Only Against The Man Who Starts Its Use. No, I Do Not Share His Evil Or Sink To His Concept Of Morality: I Merely Grant Him His Choice, Destruction, The Only Destruction He Had The Right To Choose: His Own.

A Rational Process Is A Moral Process. You May Make An Error At Any Step Of It, With Nothing To Protect You But Your Own Severity, Or You May Try To Cheat, To Fake The Evidence And Evade The Effort Of The Quest - But If Devotion To The Truth Is The Hallmark Of Morality, Then There Is No Greater, Nobler, More Heroic Form Of Devotion Than The Act Of A Man Who Assumes The Responsibility Of Thinking.

There Are Two Side To Every Issue.

The Creed Of Sacrifice Is A Morality For The Immoral.

If A Man Speculates On What 'society' Should Do For The Poor, He Accepts Thereby The Collectivist Premise That Men's Lives Belong To Society And That He, As A Member Of Society, Has The Right To Dispose Of Them...that Psychological Confession Reveals The Enormity Of The Extent To Which Altruism Erodes Men's Capacity To Grasp The Concept Of Rights Or The Value Of An Individual Life.

Indiscriminate Tolerance And Indiscriminate Condemnation Are Not Two Opposites: They Are Two Variants Of The Same Evasion. To Declare That “everybody Is White” Or “everybody Is Black” Or “everybody Is Neither White Nor Black, But Gray,” Is Not A Moral Judgment, But An Escape From The Responsibility Of Moral Judgment.

We Can Evade Reality, But We Cannot Evade The Consequences Of Evading Reality

Thanksgiving Is A Typically American Holiday. In Spite Of Its Religious Form (giving Thanks To God For A Good Harvest), Its Essential, Secular Meaning Is A Celebration Of Successful Production. It Is A Producers’ Holiday. The Lavish Meal Is A Symbol Of The Fact That Abundant Consumption Is The Result And Reward Of Production. Abundance Is (or Was And Ought To Be) America’s Pride-just As It Is The Pride Of American Parents That Their Children Need Never Know Starvation.

The Art Of Writing Is The Art Of Doing What You Think You're Doing. This Is Not As Simple As It Sounds. It Implies A Very Difficult Undertaking: The Necessity To Think. And It Implies The Requirement To Think Out Three Separate, Very Hard Problems: What Is It You Want To Say? How Are You Going To Say It? Have You Really Said It?

America's Founding Ideal Was The Principle Of Individual Rights. Nothing More - And Nothing Less.

If A Dedication Page Were To Precede The Total Of My Work, It Would Read: To The Glory Of Man.

The Right Of A Nation To Determine Its Own Form Of Government Does Not Include The Right To Establish A Slave Society (that Is, To Legalize The Enslavement Of Some Men By Others). There Is No Such Thing As "the Right To Enslave." A Nation Can Do It, Just As A Man Can Become A Criminal- But Neither Can Do It By Right.

There Is No Transgression Blacker Than To Do Or Think Alone.

I Would Give The Greatest Sunset In The World For One Sight Of New York's Skyline.

Every Loneliness Is A Pinnacle

I Never Found Beauty In Longing For The Impossible And Never Found The Possible To Be Beyond My Reach.

Only The Man Who Extols The Purity Of Love Devoid Of Desire, Is Capable Of The Depravity Of A Desire Devoid Of Love.

Competition Is A By-product Of Productive Work, Not Its Goal.

Productive Work

I Take No Pride In Hopeless Longing; I Wouldn't Hold A Stillborn Aspiration. I'd Want To Have It, To Make It, To Live It.

You Seek Escape From Pain. We Seek The Achievement Of Happiness. You Exist For The Sake Of Avoiding Punishment. We Exist For The Sake Of Earning Rewards. Threats Will Not Make Us Function; Fear Is Not Our Incentive. It Is Not Death That We Wish To Avoid, But Life That We Wish To Live

Have You Ever Felt The Longing For Someone You Could Admire? For Something, Not To Look Down At, But Up To?

The Concept Of Free Competition Enforced By Law Is A Grotesque Contradiction In Terms.

We, Equality 7-2521, Were Not Happy In Those Year In The Home Of The Students. It Was Not That The Learning Was Too Hard For Us. It Was That The Learning Was Too Easy. This Is A Great Sin, To Be Born With A Head Which Is Too Quick. It Is Not Good To Be Different From Our Brothers, But It Is Evil To Be Superior To Them. The Teachers Told Us So, And They Frowned When They Looked At Us.

The Secret Dread Of Modern Intellectuals, Liberals And Conservatives Alike, The Unadmitted Terror At The Root Of Their Anxiety, Which All Of Their Current Irrationalities Are Intended To Stave Off And To Disguise, Is The Unstated Knowledge That Soviet Russia [was] The Full, Actual, Literal, Consistent Embodiment Of The Morality Of Altruism, That Stalin Did Not Corrupt A Noble Ideal, That This Is The Only Way Altruism Has To Be Or Can Ever Be Practiced.

Money Is The Root Of All Good.

The Causes Of Illusions Are Not Pretty To Discover. They're Either Vicious Or Tragic.

And What Is The State But A Servant And A Convenience For A Large Number Of People, Just Like The Electric Light And The Plumbing System? And Wouldnt It Be Preposterous To Claim That Men Must Exist For Their Plumbing, Not The Plumbing For The Men.

Don't Rely On Our Knowledge Of What's Best For Your Future. We Do Know, But It Can't Be Best Until You Know It.

The Government Was Set To Protect Man From Criminals, And The Constitution Was Written To Protect Man From The Government.

Libertarian Party

The Only Purpose Of Education Is To Teach A Student How To Live His Life-by Developing His Mind And Equipping Him To Deal With Reality. The Training He Needs Is Theoretical, I.e., Conceptual. He Has To Be Taught To Think, To Understand, To Integrate, To Prove. He Has To Be Taught The Essentials Of The Knowledge Discovered In The Past-and He Has To Be Equipped To Acquire Further Knowledge By His Own Effort.

Do Not Ever Say That The Desire To 'do Good' By Force Is A Good Motive. Neither Power-lust Nor Stupidity Are Good Motives.

Whatever Road I Take, The Guiding Star Is Within Me; The Guiding Star And The Loadstone Which Point The Way. They Point In But One Direction. They Point To Me.

Do Not Lose Your Knowledge That Man's Proper Estate Is An Upright Posture, An Intransigent Mind, And A Step That Travels Unlimited Roads.

Live And Act Within The Limit Of Your Knowledge And Keep Expanding It To The Limit Of Your Life.

Just As Man's Physical Existence Was Liberated When He Grasped That 'nature, To Be Commanded, Must Be Obeyed', So His Consciousness Will Be Liberated When Grasps That Nature, To Be Apprehended, Must Be Obeyed - That The Rules Of Cognition Must Be Derived From The Nature Of Existence And The Nature, The Identity, Of His Cognitive Faculty.

Live And Act Within The Limit Of Your Knowledge And Keep Expanding It To The Limit Of Your Life. Redeem Your Mind From The Hockshops Of Authority. Accept The Fact That You Are Not Omniscient, But Playing A Zombie Will Not Give You Omniscience-that Your Mind Is Fallible, But Becoming Mindless Will Not Make You Infallible-that An Error Made On Your Own Is Safer Than Ten Truths Accepted On Faith, Because The First Leaves You The Means To Correct It, But The Second Destroys Your Capacity To Distinguish Truth From Error.

It Is The Basic, Metaphysical Fact Of Man's Nature -- The Connection Between His Survival And His Use Of Reason -- That Capitalism Recognizes And Protects.

Men Have Died In Torture Chambers, On The Stake, In Concentration Camps, In Front Of Firing Squads, Rather Than Renounce Their Convictions. The Appeaser Renounces His Under The Pressure Of A Frown On A Vacant Face.

Capitalism Is A Social System Based On The Recognition Of Individual Rights, Including Property Rights, In Which All Property Is Privately Owned.

Any Work Is Creative Work If Done By A Thinking Mind.

Productive Work

There Is No Affirmation Without The One Who Affirms. In This Sense, Everything To Which You Grant Your Love Is Yours

The First Right On Earth Is The Right Of The Ego. Man's First Duty Is To Himself. His Moral Law Is Never To Place His Prime Goal Within The Persons Of Others. His Moral Obligation Is To Do What He Wishes, Provided His Wish Does Not Depend Primarily Upon Other Men.

Collectivism Is The Ancient Principle Of Savagery. ... Collectivism Is Not The 'new Order Of Tomorrow.' It Is The Order Of A Very Dark Yesterday.

What I Want You To Understand, Is The Full Evil Of Those Who Claim To Have Become Convinced That This Earth, By Its Nature, Is A Realm Of Malevolence Where The Good Has No Chance To Win. Let Them Check Their Premises. Let Them Check Their Standards Of Value. Let Them Check - Before They Grant Themselves The Unspeakable License Of Evil-as-necessity - Whether They Know What Is The Good And What Are The Conditions It Requires.

Economics Departments Are Dominated By Marxism, Which Is Taken Straight Or On The Rocks, In The Form Of Keynesianism.

All Life Is A Purposeful Struggle, And Your Only Choice Is The Choice Of A Goal.

All Depressions Are Caused By Government Interference And The Cure Is Always Offered To Take More Of The Poison That Caused The Disaster. Depressions Are Not The Result Of A Free Economy.

Sacrifice Is The Surrender Of That Which You Value In Favor Of Which You Dont

He Stepped To The Window And Pointed To The Skyscrapers Of The City. He Said That We Had To Extinguish The Lights Of The World, And When We Would See The Lights Of New York Go Out, We Would Know That Our Job Was Done.

I Think It's Funny. There Was A Time When Men Were Afraid That Somebody Would Reveal Some Secret Of Theirs That Was Unknown To Their Fellows. Nowadays, They're Afraid That Somebody Will Name What Everybody Knows. Have You Practical People Ever Thought That That's All It Would Take To Blast Your Whole, Big, Complex Structure, With All Your Laws And Guns - Just Somebody Naming The Exact Nature Of What You're Doing?

I Am Unwilling To Be Wholly Good—and Please Don't Regard Me As Wholly Evil!

Self-sacrifice? But It Is Precisely The Self That Cannot And Must Not Be Sacrificed.

But I Still Wonder How It Was Possible, In Those Graceless Years Of Transition, Long Ago, That Men Did Not See Whither They Were Going, And Went On, In Blindness And Cowardice, To Their Fate. I Wonder, For It Is Hard For Me To Conceive How Men Who Knew The Word "i," Could Give It Up And Not Know What They Lost. But Such Has Been The Story, For I Have Lived In The City Of The Damned, And I Know What Horror Men Permitted To Be Brought Upon Them.

The Uncontested Absurdities Of Today Are The Accepted Slogans Of Tomorrow. They Come To Be Accepted By Degrees, By Dint Of Constant Pressure On One Side And Constant Retreat On The Other - Until One Day When They Are Suddenly Declared To Be The Country's Official Ideology.

It Is A Matter Of Record That In The German Election Of 1933, The Communist Party Was Ordered By Its Leaders To Vote For The Nazis - With The Explanation That They Could Later Fight The Nazis For Power, But First They Had To Help Destroy Their Common Enemy : Capitalism And Its Parliamentary Form Of Government.

Just As There Is No Such Thing As A Collective Or Racial Mind, So There Is No Such Thing As A Collective Or Racial Achievement. There Are Only Individual Minds And Individual Achievements-an D A Culture Is Not The Anonymous Product Of Undifferentiate D Masses, But The Sum Of The Intellectual Achievements Of Individual Men.

I Don't Like People Who Speak Or Think In Terms Of Gaining Anybody's Confidence. If One's Actions Are Honest, One Does Not Need The Predated Confidence Of Others, Only Their Rational Perception. The Person Who Craves A Moral Blank Check Of That Kind, Has Dishonest Intentions, Whether He Admits It To Himself Or Not.

The Meaning Ascribed In Popular Usage To The Word 'selfishness' Is Not Merely Wrong: It Represents A Devastating Intellectual 'package-deal,' Which Is Responsible, More Than Any Other Single Factor, For The Arrested Moral Development Of Mankind.

Moral Development

People Create Their Own Questions Because They Are Afraid To Look Straight. All You Have To Do Is Look Straight And See The Road, And When You See It, Don't Sit Looking At It - Walk.

Have You Ever Felt A Potential Love For Someone? Like, You Don't Actually Love Them And You Know You Don't, But You Know You Could. You Realise That You Could Easily Fall In Love With Them. It's Almost Like The Bud Of A Flower, Ready To Blossom But It's Just Not Quite There Yet. And You Like Them A Lot, You Really Do. You Think About Them Often, But You Don't Love Them. You Could, Though. You Know You Could.

Falling In Love

Do Not Make The Mistake Of The Ignorant Who Think That An Individualist Is A Man Who Says: “i’ll Do As I Please At Everybody Else’s Expense.” An Individualist Is A Man Who Recognizes The Inalienable Individual Rights Of Man—his Own And Those Of Others.

Unjust Laws Have To Be Fought Ideologically; They Cannot Be Fought Or Corrected By Means Of Mere Disobedience And Futile Martyrdom.

A Rational Mind Does Not Work Under Compulsion; It Does Not Subordinate Its Grasp Of Reality To Anyone's Orders, Directives, Or Controls; It Does Not Sacrifice Its Knowledge, Its View Of The Truth, To Anyone's Opinions, Threats, Wishes, Plans.

There Can Be No Compromise Between Freedom And Government Controls; To Accept 'just A Few Controls' Is To Surrender The Principle Of Inalienable Individual Rights And To Substitute For It The Principle Of The Government’s Unlimited, Arbitrary Power, Thus Delivering Oneself Into Gradual Enslavement. As An Example Of This Process, Observe The Present Domestic Policy Of The United States.

The [u.s.] Constitution Is A Limitation On The Government, Not On Private Individuals ... It Does Not Prescribe The Conduct Of Private Individuals, Only The Conduct Of The Government ... It Is Not A Charter For Government Power, But A Charter Of The Citizen's Protection Against The Government.

Freedom Of Association Includes The Freedom Not To Associate.

I Am Older Than You. Believe Me, There Is No Other Way To Live On Earth. Men Are Not Open To Truth Or Reason. They Cannot Be Reached By A Rational Argument. The Mind Is Powerless Against Them. Yet We Have To Deal With Them. If We Want To Accomplish Anything, We Have To Deceive Them Into Letting Us Accomplish It. Or Force Them. They Understand Nothing Else. We Cannot Expect Their Support For Any Endeavor Of The Intellect, For Any Goal Of The Spirit. They Are Nothing But Vicious Animals. They Are Greedy, Self-indulgent, Predatory Dollar-chasers

One Must Never Allow Oneself To Acquire An Exaggerated Sense Of One's Own Importance. There's No Necessity To Burden Oneself With Absolutes

Independence Is The Recognition Of The Fact That Yours Is The Responsibility Of Judgement And Nothing Can Help You Escape It - That No Substitute Can Do Your Thinking, As No Pinch-hitter Can Live Your Life.

A Culture Is Made — Or Destroyed — By Its Articulate Voices.

When You Are Asked To Love Everybody Indiscriminately, That Is To Love People Without Any Standard, To Love Them Regardless Of Whether They Have Any Value Or Virtue, You Are Asked To Love Nobody.

Capitalism And Altruism Are Incompatible; They Are Philosophical Opposites; They Cannot Co-exist In The Same Man Or In The Same Society.

In A Capitalist Society, All Human Relationships Are Voluntary.

Human Relations

The Government Has Created A Nation Of Paper Criminals. People Can Be Put In Jail And Lose Civil Rights And Liberties Through Bureaucratic Procedures.the Only Thing That Is Keeping You Out Of Jail Is Government Goodwill.

Aquinas Brought An Aristotelian View Of Reason Back Into European Culture, And Lighted The Way Toward The Renaissance.

I Am Opposed To All Forms Of Control. I Am For An Absolute, Laissez-faire, Free, Unregulated Economy.

If Men Want To Oppose War, It Is Statism That They Must Oppose. So Long As They Hold The Tribal Notion That The Individual Is Sacrificial Fodder For The Collective, That Some Men Have The Right To Rule Others By Force, And That Some (any) Alleged “good” Can Justify It-there Can Be No Peace Within A Nation And No Peace Among Nations.

We Are On Strike, We, The Men Of The Mind. We Are On Strike Against Self-immolation. We Are On Strike Against The Creed Of Unearned Rewards And Unrewarded Duties. We Are On Strike Against The Dogma That The Pursuit Of One's Happiness Is Evil. We Are On Strike Against The Doctrine That Life Is Guilt.

Statism Needs War; A Free Country Does Not. Statism Survives By Looting; A Free Country Survives By Producing.

It Does Not Matter That Only A Few In Each Generation Will Grasp And Achieve The Full Reality Of Man's Proper Stature-and The Rest Will Betray It. It Is Those Few That Move The World And Give Life Its Meaning-and It Is Those Few That I Have Always Sought To Address. The Rest Are No Concern Of Mine; It Is Not Me Or "the Fountainhead" That They Will Betray: It Is Their Own Souls.

God Help Us, Ma'am! Do You See What We Saw? We Saw That We'd Been Given A Law To Live By, A Moral Law, They Called It, Which Punished Those Who Observed It - For Observing It. The More You Tried To Live Up To It, The More You Suffered; The More You Cheated It, The Bigger Reward You Got. Your Honesty Was Like A Tool Left At The Mercy Of The Next Man's Dishonesty. The Honest Ones Paid, The Dishonest Collected. The Honest Lost, The Dishonest Won. How Long Could Men Stay Good Under This Sort Of A Law Of Goodness?

As We Gain Knowledge, We Do Not Become More Certain, We Become Certain Of More.

She Knew That She Could Not Have Reached This White Serenity Except As The Sum Of All The Colors, Of All The Violence She Had Known.

In Order To Live, Man Must Act; In Order To Act, He Must Make Choices; In Order To Make Choices, He Must Define A Code Of Values; In Order To Define A Code Of Values, He Must Know What He Is And Where He Is – I.e. He Must Know His Own Nature (including His Means Of Knowledge) And The Nature Of The Universe In Which He Acts – I.e. He Needs Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Which Means: Philosophy. He Cannot Escape From This Need; His Only Alternative Is Whether The Philosophy Guiding Him Is To Be Chosen By His Mind Or By Chance.

Racism Is The Lowest, Most Crudely Primitive Form Of Collectivism. It Is The Notion Of Ascribing Moral, Social Or Political Significance To A Man’s Genetic Lineage-the Notion That A Man’s Intellectual And Characterologic Al Traits Are Produced And Transmitted By His Internal Body Chemistry.

The Only Proper Functions Of A Government Are: The Police, To Protect You From Criminals; The Army, To Protect You From Foreign Invaders; And The Courts, To Protect Your Property And Contracts From Breach Or Fraud By Others, And To Settle Disputes By Rational Rules, According To Objective Law.

Whenever Destroyers Appear Among Men, They Start By Destroying Money, For Money Is Men's Protection And The Base Of A Moral Existence. Destroyers Seize Gold And Leave To Its Owners A Counterfeit Pile Of Paper. This Kills All Objective Standards And Delivers Men Into The Arbitrary Power Of An Arbitrary Setter Of Values. Gold Was An Objective Value, An Equivalent Of Wealth Produced. Paper Is A Mortgage On Wealth That Does Not Exist, Backed By A Gun Aimed At Those Who Are Expected To Produce It.

A Man Of Independent Judgment Is A Man Of Profound Self-esteem.

Whether It’s A Symphony Or A Coal Mine, All Work Is An Act Of Creating And Comes From The Same Source: From An Inviolate Capacity To See Through One’s Own Eyes-which Means: The Capacity To Perform A Rational Identification- Which Means: The Capacity To See, To Connect And To Make What Had Not Been Seen, Connected And Made Before.

Contrary To The Vulgar Belief That Men Are Motivated Primarily By Materialistic Considerations, We Now See The Capitalist System Being Discredited And Destroyed All Over The World, Even Though This System Has Given Men The Greatest Material Comforts.

Money Is Just A Tool. It Will Take You Anywhere You Want, But You Have To Be The Driver

In A Capitalist Society, All Human Relationships Are Voluntary. Men Are Free To Cooperate Or Not, To Deal With One Another Or Not, As Their Own Individual Judgments, Convictions And Interests Dictate.

He Liked To Observe Emotions; They Were Like Red Lanterns Strung Along The Dark Unknown Of Another's Personality, Marking Vulnerable Points.

Morality Pertains Only To The Sphere Of Man's Free Will - Only To Those Actions Which Are Open To His Choice.

If The Humanists Wish To Be Champions Of Reason, They Should Consider The Following: Just As They Would Not Admit Mystics Into Their Camp, Since No Rational Discussion Is Possible With Men Who Substitute Supernatural Revelations For Rational Evidence-so They Cannot Admit Advocates Of Force Into Their Camp, Because No Rational Discussion Or Agreement Is Possible With Men Who Substitute Guns For Rational Persuasion.

Well, I Always Know What I Want. And When You Know What You Want--you Go Toward It. Sometimes You Go Very Fast, And Sometimes Only An Inch A Year. Perhaps You Feel Happier When You Go Fast. I Don't Know. I've Forgotten The Difference Long Ago, Because It Really Doesn't Matter, So Long As You Move.

Self-esteem Is Reliance On Ones Power To Think.

There Is Nothing To Take A Man’s Freedom Away From Him, Save Other Men.

Potentially, A Government Is The Most Dangerous Threat To Man's Rights; It Holds A Legal Monopoly On The Use Of Physical Force Against Legally Disarmed Victims. When Unlimited And Unrestricted By Individual Rights, A Government Is Man's Deadliest Enemy. It Is Not As Protection Against Private Actions, But Against Governmental Actions That The Bill Of Rights Was Written.

There Are No Contradictions. If You Find One, Check Your Premises.

Love Is Not Self-sacrifice, But The Most Profound Assertion Of Your Own Needs And Values. It Is For Your Own Happiness That You Need The Person You Love, And That Is The Greatest Compliment, The Greatest Tribute You Can Pay To That Person.

Observe How Many People Evade, Rationalize And Drive Their Minds Into A State Of Blind Stupor, In Dread Of Discovering That Those They Deal With- Their "loved Ones" Or Friends Or Business Associates Or Political Rulers- Are Not Merely Mistaken, But Evil. Observe That This Dread Leads Them To Sanction, To Help And To Spread The Very Evil Whose Existence They Fear To Acknowledge.

The Hardest Thing To Explain Is The Glaringly Evident Which Everybody Had Decided Not To See.

One Must Differentiate Between One's Thoughts And One's Emotions With Full Clarity And Precision...no Discussion, Cooperation, Agreement, Or Understanding Is Possible Among Men Who Substitute Emotion For Proof.

Ethics Is A Code Of Values Which Guide Our Choices And Actions And Determine The Purpose And Course Of Our Lives.

Censorship' Is A Term Pertaining Only To Governmental Action. No Private Action Is Censorship. No Private Individual Or Agency Can Silence A Man Or Suppress A Publication; Only The Government Can Do So. The Freedom Of Speech Of Private Individuals Includes The Right Not To Agree, Not To Listen And Not To Finance One's Own Antagonists.

The Great Creators-the Thinkers, The Artists, The Scientists, The Inventors-stood Alone Against The Men Of Their Time.

Every Movement That Seeks To Enslave A Country, Every Dictatorship Or Potential Dictatorship, Needs Some Minority Group As A Scapegoat Which It Can Blame For The Nation's Troubles And Use As A Justification Of Its Own Demands For Dictatorial Powers. In Soviet Russia, The Scapegoat Was The Bourgeoisie; In Nazi Germany, It Was The Jewish People; In America, It Is The Businessmen.

Indiscriminate Tolerance And Indiscriminate Condemnation Are Not Two Opposites: They Are Two Variants Of The Same Evasion.

Faith And Force ... Are Corollaries: Every Period Of History Dominated By Mysticism, Was A Period Of Statism, Of Dictatorship, Of Tyranny.

Achievement Of Your Happiness Is The Only Moral Purpose Of Your Life, And That Happiness, Not Pain Or Mindless Self-indulgence, Is The Proof Of Your Moral Integrity, Since It Is The Proof And The Result Of Your Loyalty To The Achievement Of Your Values.

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