 On a recent afternoon, while riding a rickety bus down Vali Asr Avenue, Tehran's main thoroughfare, I overheard two women discussing the grim state of Iranian politics. One of them had reached a rather desperate conclusion. "Let the Americans come," she said loudly. "Let them sort things out for us once and for all." Everyone in the women's section of the bus absorbed this casually, and her friend nodded in assent.
Azadeh Moaveni
Stars and Stripes in their Eyes
If one views ethics as a life compass, as I do, then what does it mean to guide one's life "perfectly"? Is the goal of a sailor to "perfectly" follow a compass heading in a perfectly straight line -- or is it to get to his destination, learning and adjusting as he goes, using his knowledge and skills to the best of his ability?
Robert James Bidinotto
The Passion of Barbara Branden
When I was on the bus with [McCain], I asked him a lot of questions about the bailout because most Americans did not want that to happen....I asked him some pretty direct questions. Some of the answers you guys are gonna receive -- they appalled me, absolutely. I was angry. In fact, I wanted to get off the bus after I talked to him.
Joe The Plumber
Fox News
There should not be such a thing as a big government Republican.
Jeb Bush
Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard
If you can figure out how to tame the hormones of young adults with rhetoric let me know and we'll see if we translate your magical persuasive techniques to get people to vote for free-enterprise candidates.
Steve Wolfer
When I First Became a Criminal
There is still too much Rand in Objectivism. That is why there are the "orthodox" and the "liberal" Objectivists or whatever you call them. Because of the "cult of personality" or "persona" Objectivism cannot become an independent philosophy. Oscar Wilde made a remark about literature which I think is comparable to this. "Dans la literature il faut toujours tuer son pere." (In literature one must always kill one's father.) Objectivists need to kill Rand in order for the philosophy to live, otherwise it will stagnate.
Anthony Teets
Objectivism as an Intuitive System
The rare strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross obvious thing is to miss it. Chaos is dull; because in chaos a train might go anywhere -- to Baker Street or Bagdad. But man is a magician and his whole magic is in this that he does say 'Victoria,' and lo! it is Victoria.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Man who was Thursday
Why are we bailing out Citibank? Why are 300 million Americans having to pay for Citibank's mistakes? The way the system is supposed to work [is this]: People fail. And then the competent people take over the assets from the failed people, and then you start again with a new stronger base. What we're doing this time is ... taking the assets from the competent people, giving them to the incompetent people, and saying, "OK, now you can compete with the competent people." So everybody's weakened: The whole nation is weakened, the whole economy is weakened. That's not the way it's supposed to work.
Jim Rogers
Quoted by John Stossel
Indeed, jealousy is the great unacknowledged strategic factor of our time.
Ralph Peters
Devils in Mumbai
The new Detroit, churning out Schumermobiles, will make the steel mills of the Soviet Union look the model of efficiency.
Charles Krauthammer
RCP my punctuation, brought to my attention by Steve Wolfer
A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, He has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
All Things Considered
THIEVES respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fullness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people's.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Man who was Thursday
EVERYTHING is military in the sense that everything depends upon obedience. There is no perfectly epicurean corner; there is no perfectly irresponsible place. Everywhere men have made the way for us with sweat and submission. We may fling ourselves into a hammock in a fit of divine carelessness. But we are glad that the net-maker did not make the net in a fit of divine carelessness. We may jump upon a child's rocking-horse for a joke. But we are glad that the carpenter did not leave the legs of it unglued for a joke.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Heretics
Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?
Henry II
Wikipedia
The anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany was the first public anti-smoking campaign in modern history.
Wikipedia (Anonymous Editor)
Wikipedia portal headline, Featured Article, 11/13/2008
It is not the abundance of money but the abundance of other products in general that facilitates sales... Money performs no more than the role of a conduit in this double exchange. When the exchanges have been completed, it will be found that one has paid for products with products.
Jean-Baptiste Say
Wikipedia on Say's Law
Good evening, ladies and gentleman. Welcome to the show. In the interest of safety, please take a moment to identify the nearest marked exit. But in case of an actual emergency, please remain setaed and await the Federal Bailout.
George Will
loosely, quoting from the show "Irony Abounds"
Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.
Lazarus Long
as quoted by Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.
Ronald Reagan
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Ronald Reagan
Barack Obama has the kind of cocksure confidence that can only be achieved by not achieving anything else.
Thomas Sowell
Ego and Mouth
Don't blame businessmen for the moral failings of bureaucrats. That's what's always been done, and what has gotten us where we are today.
Edward D. Thompson
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/GeneralForum/1324.shtml#12
[Obama?] A man who, should he win the election and serve one term, will have been President of the United States longer than he has held any steady job.
David Warren
National Review
Palin's ignorance of the fruit fly is exceeded only by Obama's ignorance of economics, history, diplomacy, the American Constitution, the Bill of Rights, freedom, justice, common sense, and morality.
Barbara Branden
http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=6184&view=findpost&p=58851
I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.
J. R. R. Tolkien
Lord of the Rings
Let there be light! Let the dawn rise over heavens and earth! There can be no glory, no splendour, until the human being exists, the fully developed man!
The Popol Vuh
Father Francisco Ximenez's copy of the Mayan Codex, Newberry Library, Chicago
I do not think that G. H. Hardy was talking nonsense when he insisted that the mathematician was discovering rather than creating, nor was it wholly nonsense for Kepler to exult that he was thinking God's thoughts after him. The world for me is a necessary system, and in the degree to which the thinker can surrender his thought to that system and follow it, he is in a sense participating in that which is timeless or eternal.
Brand Blanshard
The Philosophy of Brand Blanshard
A hero is one who knows how to make a friend out of an opponent.
The Talmud
Adam Reed's Translation
It needs but one foe to breed a war, not two... And those who have not swords can still die upon them.
J. R. R. Tolkien
Eowyn, Return of the King, p 264
You see a lot, Doctor. But are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself? What about it? Why don't you -- why don't you look at yourself and write down what you see? Or maybe you're afraid to.
Clarice Starling
The Silence of the Lambs
Consider that you too are a "governmentalist" just like all anarchists. You want men governed after all, just by your lights. An anarchist society is a governed society or it wouldn't exist. A true anarchist is a banished tribal member and he is alone.
Brant Gaede
Objectivist Living
Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to.
J. R. R. Tolkien
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/J._R._R._Tolkien
In a rational society, Barney Franks would find himself walking down some dirt road, trying to find his way back home, wondering about what to do with his life and how to get the tar and feathers off of his miserable hide.
Steve Wolfer
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Blogs/0043_1.shtml#21
Do you see how a focus on human disfigurement -- a focus which doesn't include any attempt to fix or prevent it, but to just focus on it for the mere fact that it is there -- is immoral?
Edward D. Thompson
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/ObjectivismQ&A/0294.shtml#5
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.
Frank Herbert
The Orange Catholic Bible
Russia is filthy rich? Sadly, a more appropriate description than you might think.
Jay Abbott
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/ArticleDiscussions/2038_2.shtml#40
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You say, "Never mind the theories - those are but academic exercises... " But there have been nothing but empty theories and foolish academic exercises to support the absurd claim that anarchy could ever work.
On the other hand, government is already working, and working extremely well in every area where it is aligned with individual rights. Go out and buy something - an ink cartridge for the computer printer, for example. Look at the chain of transactions protected by courts, laws, legislature, law enforcement, etc., that define the terms of valid contracts, property rights, and outlaw the fraud or initiation of force, or theft that could interfere with that. You can point out all the things that are wrong, like the taxes, or a limitation on importation, or requirements for a business license - and we would agree. But each of these can be diminished to the vanishing point until there is no complaint left except a claim that government itself is bad even if it no longer does ANYTHING bad. And there is nothing sensible in that!
Steve Wolfer
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Quotes/1208.shtml#11
Punishment, limping in one leg, patiently follows every criminal
George Santayana
Volume Five of "The Life of Reason"
Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Speaker, 12/15/1900
When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
London Daily News
I don't believe in the 'Sky Bully.'
Joss Whedon
wikipedia
A perfect world: Forbid voluntary euthanasia to people in the final stage of incurable illness because life is sacred and untouchable, but touch and desecrate the life of thousands and millions of healthy, capable people by sending them to war, where they will be killed or maimed, to then subject the on purpose produced disabled to the prohibition of applying voluntary euthanasia.
Manfred F. Schieder (1937 - )
The recent death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn should make us recall what he said when he was awarded the Nobel Prize: "The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles." What would a Barack Obama presidency mean, other than more concessions and broader smiles, while Iran goes nuclear?
Thomas Sowell
RealClearPolitics
The difference between sentiment and being sentimental is the following: Sentiment is when a driver swerves out of the way to avoid hitting a rabbit on the road. Being sentimental is when the same driver, swerving away from the rabbit, hits a pedestrian
Frank Herbert
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/frank_herbert/
My observation, and not only mine, has been that people go in for relativism, agnosticism or solipsism when they don't have a case. Stephen Hicks is one of several who've noted that when socialists got to that point they called it postmodernism.
Peter Reidy
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Dissent/0195_1.shtml#30
Most people either say that they agree with Bernard Shaw or that they do not understand him. I am the only person who understands him, and I do not agree with him.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
George Bernard Shaw
Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.
Frank Herbert
Philosophical principles are no substitute for thinking, yet many Objectivists act as if they were.
Nathaniel Branden
wikipedia
War is about killing. Killing people. It's not about making friends - with bullets.
Ralph Peters
Book TV
Contrary to Neil Young, the Aztecs were not flower children.
Ralph Peters
Book TV
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