 Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.
Paul Gauguin
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. You are the guy who'll decide where to go.
Theodor Seuss Geisel
"For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer."
Arnold Schwarzenegger
If you agree with some tenets of Objectivism, but disagree with others, do not call yourself an Objectivist; give proper authorship credit for the parts you agree with—and then indulge in any flights of fancy you wish, on your own.
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand, "To the Readers of The Objectivist Forum,” The Objectivist Forum, Vol. 1, No. 1, ARI FAQ
It is the men who will be content with nothing but the best whom we have to thank for every serious advance which man and society have actually made towards even a moderately "better". If the merely "relatively better" were enough to content us, it would not be apparent why we should take even the first steps.
A.E. Taylor
The Faith of a Moralist, Vol I., p. 139
Life... is strength. That is not to be contested; it seems logical enough. You live; you affect your world.
Jon Irenicus
Baldurs Gate 2
If you take a man as he is, you make him worse. If you take a man as he can be, you make him better.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What can "explain one of the most distressing features of the neo-Kantians: the fierceness and bitterness of their polemics, the nastiness of their ad hominem arguments, which destroyed personal friendships and decent collegial relations? Heinrich Rickert (Heidelberg) wrote to Paul Natorp (Marburg): 'Just because we critical idealists agree on fundamentals, we have to take the knives to each other."
Klaus Kohnke
From Klaus Christian Köhnke's _The Rise of Neo-Kantianism_ (Cambridge University Press 1991), p. x:
The people who sow that fear want something from you, and it usually is not in your best interest to heed them.
Kurt Eichert
You’ve got one life and today’s context...every f**k up is sending you that much further away from realizing your potential–that is called a sacrifice.
Michael Newberry
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?
Rabbi Hillel
Ancient Hebrew adage
By its nature, evasion is a form of nonintegration. It is the most lethal form: the willful disintegration of mental contents. A man in this condition no longer has the means to determine consistency or contradiction, truth or falsehood. In his conciousness, all conceptual content is reduced to the capricious, the baseless, the arbitrary; no conclusion qualifies as knowledge in a mind that rejects the requirements of cognition. Thus the real evader, like the hypothetical one I mentioned first, reaches only one end and one kind of "safety": all-encompassing blindness.
Leonard Peikoff
Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
The first rule of human happiness is to want the truth, the second is to learn to recognize it when it comes. It’s all about wanting what you really need, and -- as a human “being” -- you really do need these 2 things (to thrive).
Edward D. Thompson
Ed Thompson
Live in the world, not against it.
Philip Coates
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/ArticleDiscussions/0257.shtml#15
Thomas Edison did more for civilization than all the gurus and all the world's religions.
Steve Jobs
LA Times: Walt's Shoes at Disney Could Be a Fit for Jobs
Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.
Ayn Rand
Opening paragraph of the personal statements by a Ph.D. student applicant
Reason and justice tell me there's more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism.
Anton Chekhov
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
Anton Chekhov
What exactly is success? For me it is to be found not in applause, but in the satisfaction of feeling that one is realizing one's ideal.
Anna Pavlova
What's invalid is invalid. It's generally not a point of discussion except for those who insist on claiming that they have unprovable beliefs. Reality invalidates the arbitrary and the non-existant. ... not me.
Ethan Dawe
In response to a Religionist, on the "Forty-Two Will Do" thread.
Such is the basic contradiction---and the terrible parasitic immorality---of any attempt to "tongue-in-cheek" thrillers. It requires that one employ all the values of a thriller in order to hold the audience's interest, yet turn these values against themselves, that one damage the very elements one is using and counting on. It means an attempt to cash in on the thing one is mocking, to profit by the audience's hunger for Romanticism while seeking to destroy it. This is not the method of a legitimate satire: satire does not share the values of that which it denounces; it denounces by means and context of an opposite set of values.
Ayn Rand
Bootleg Romanticism: The Romantic Manifesto
The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and science is of noteworthy kind. They are dependent upon each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is—insofar as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist
Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character.
Ayn Rand
"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
If we [humans] disappeared overnight, the world would probably be better off.
David Attenborough
The Daily Telegraph, London, 12 November
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
George Bernard Shaw
There, where the state ends - there only begins the man who is not superfluous: there begins the song of the necessary man, the unique and irreplaceable melody.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Don't pass judgement (about private conduct) unless you know something is improper, and so don't wish to deal with the person. If you are not personally involved, don't pass judgement.
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Answers, p. 138.
My proof convinces the ignorant, and the wise man's proof convinces me. But he whose reasoning falls between wisdom and ignorance, I neither can convince him, nor can he convince me.
Kahlil Gibran
Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran
Seven times have I despised my soul: The first time when I saw her being meek that she might attain height. The second time when I saw her limping before the crippled. The third time when she was given to choose between the hard and the easy, and she chose the easy. The fourth time when she committed a wrong, and comforted herself that others also commit wrong. The fifth time when she forbore for weakness, and attributed her patience to strength. The sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face, and knew not that it was one of her own masks. And the seventh time when she sang a song of praise, and deemed it a virtue.
Kahlil Gibran
Sand and Foam
Behold here is a paradox: the deep and the high are nearer to one another than the mid-level to either.
Kahlil Gibran
Sand and Foam
A pearl is a temple built by pain around a grain of sand. What longing built our bodies and around what grains?
Kahlil Gibran
Sand and Foam
A proof of courage ? To step into someone else’s shoes!
Ciro D'Agostino
I do not believe that men are afraid of dying, they are afraid of being cowards.
Ciro D'Agostino
Passion with out technique is furor!
Ciro D'Agostino
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Mahatma Gandhi
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
"Over and over the jihadist enemy tells us why he wants to kill us, and over and over we dismiss his words or reduce them to our own categories. Paralyzed by our fear of being “insensitive” to cultural differences, and deluded by our materialist preconceptions that reduce religion to an expression of some more “real” cause, we refuse to name clearly the enemy: an Islamic faith that for centuries has killed, enslaved, plundered, ravaged, and conquered in the service of its arrogant assurance of its spiritual superiority."
Bruce Thornton
http://victorhanson.com/articles/thornton101305.html
"You seem to imply that when another bookstore closes, it is our obligation to offer what they had on their shelves. How does one go about copying another person's vision?"
Steve Riggio
Barnes and Noble Booksellers, in response to "Letter from a Concerned Customer"
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
People change their own minds, or their minds don't really change.
Kevin Haggerty
"My personal life," says Ayn Rand, "is a postscript to my novels: it consists of the sentence, 'And I mean it.' I have always lived by the philosophy I present in my books--and it works for me, as it works for my characters. The concretes differ, the abstractions are the same." ... "I trust that no one will tell me that men such as I wrote about don't exist. That this book has been written--and published--is proof that they do."
Ayn Rand
"About the Author," at the end of Atlas Shrugged
I think a lot of people are afraid of freedom. They want their lives to be controlled, to be put into a box... Why should someone put a limit on how much fun I can have, how much I can accomplish?
Drew Carey
www.reason.com
"A dogma is a set of beliefs accepted on faith; that is, without rational justification or against rational evidence. A dogma is a matter of blind faith."
Ayn Rand
Jodie Foster, on career and motherhood: ``I hear my mother's voice -- `Should you have walked away from that? Will you be able to take care of yourself and your kids? You're getting old, it won't last. ...' But the choices are easily made. I'm not going to miss that Thanksgiving breakfast. I'm not going to let someone else pick out their shoes.''
Jodie Foster
The Los Angeles Times
Snowflakes, like people, are all different and beautiful, but they can be a nuisance when they lose their identity in a mob
Anonymous
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do. It is the freedom to refrain, withdraw, and abstain which makes a totalitarian regime impossible.
Eric Hoffer
Rand was also true to her values, an attitude which today is regarded as downright rude in dry, academic circles. If Rand admired something, her praise was an exultant hymn—when she admired something, she hero-worshipped. Conversely, if Rand did not think highly of something or someone, her attack could be merciless. Her sense of justice demanded this attitude ...
James S. Valliant
The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics
I am. I exist - that is certain; but for how long do I exist? For as long as I think; for it might perhaps happen, if I totally ceased thinking, that I would, at the same time, cease to be.
Rene Descartes
Meditations on First Philosophy
Within ten days thou wilt seem a god to those to whom thou art now a beast and an ape, if thou wilt return to thy principles and to worship of reason.
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations, Book 4, verse 16
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