 I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
Isaac Asimov
The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness or holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold onto.
Eric Hoffer
Gold is absolute objectivity. It is blind like justice. It has no politics and ideology, no likes or dislikes, no friends or enemies. All it recognizes is its possessor, whom it serves faithfully so long as he has it.
Charles de Gaulle
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
Jonathan Swift
"It is not uncommon to hear a clergyman utter from the pulpit all the old prejudice in favor of the poor and against the rich, while asking the rich to do something for the poor; and the rich comply, without apparently having their feelings hurt at all by the invidious comparison. We all agree that he is a good member of society who works his way up from poverty to wealth, but as soon as he has worked his way up we begin to regard him with suspicion, as a dangerous member of society. A newspaper starts the silly fallacy that “the rich are rich because the poor are industrious,” and it is copied from one end of the country to the other as if it were a brilliant apothegm."
William Graham Sumner
What Social Classes Owe to Each Other
"There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors. In the absence of such laws, capital inherited by a spendthrift will be squandered and re-accumulated in the hands of men who are fit and competent to hold it. So it should be, and under such a state of things there is no reason to desire to limit the property which any man may acquire."
William Graham Sumner
What Social Classes Owe to Each Other
The things we do today that we don't have to do will determine where we are and what we are when we can't do anything about what we should have done.
Admiral Grace Hopper
USN, creator of COBOL
Rest not! Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Like the use of the word 'concupiscence' in an earlier age to describe sexual desire, the use of the word 'pollution' to describe essential aspects of the productive activities of an industrial society represents an attempt to defame an entirely proper human capacity by means of using an evil sounding name for it.
George Reisman
Capitalism
"Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-Reliance
All the courses of my life do show, I am not in the roll of common men.
William Shakespeare
Owain Glyndwr (14th/ early 15th Century Welsh freedom fighter), Henry IV Part 1
A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.
Albert Szentgyorgyi
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character by taking away a man's initiative. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
Abraham Lincoln
I am not a noun. I am a verb.
Buckminster Fuller
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.
Giordano Bruno
There are in fact four very different stumbling blocks in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority, longstanding custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge.
Roger Bacon
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When Nature forces lengths of thread unending/ In careless whirling on the spindle round,/ When all Life's inharmonic throngs unblending/ In sullen, harsh confusion sound,/ Who parts the changeless series of creation,/ That each, enlivened, moves in rhythmic time?/ Who summons each to join the general ordination,/ In consecrated, noble harmonies to chime?/ Who bids the storm with raging passion lower?/ The sunset with a solemn meaning glow?/ Who scatters Springtime's every lovely flower/ Along the pathway where his love may go?/ Who twines the verdant leaves, unmeaning, slighted,/ Into a wreath of honor, meed of every field?/ Who makes Olympus sure, the gods united?/ The power of Man the Poet has revealed!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Faust
What would I do with his money if I have to give up my mind in order to get it?
Ayn Rand
Refusing the offer of millions of dollars from an oilman to introduce a religious element to Objectivism.
With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Jean Luc Picard quoting Judge Aaron Satie
I think that in trying to understand the socialists, you have confused yourself, which I don't wonder. The truth is that they do not understand themselves. As for Karl Marx, he is the prince of muddleheads
Henry George
By no means! For this earthly sphere / Affords a place for great deeds ever. / Astounding things shall happen here. / I feel the strength for bold endeavour.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Faust
The yonder is to me a trifling matter. / Should you this world to ruins shatter, / The other then may rise, its place to fill. / 'Tis from this Earth my pleasure springs, / And this sun shines upon my sufferings; / When once I separate me from these things, / Let happen then what can and will. / And furthermore I've no desire to hear / Whether in future too men hate and love, / And whether too in yonder sphere, / There is an under or above.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Faust
Civilization and profits go hand in hand.
Calvin Coolidge
The mind of each man is the man himself.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
The more laws, the less justice.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Thinking men cannot be ruled."
Ayn Rand
"Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power."
Henry George
"He who sees truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it."
Henry George
In 18th century England I would have been a Whig, in 19th century England—a Tory. In 19th century America I would have been a Democrat, in 20th century America— a Republican. In the 21st century I hesitate to associate myself with any of these names, as they have increasingly come to be synonymous with a single term: Socialism.
G. Stolyarov II
The term 'universe' is a mere collective designation for all the data of existence. While particular men, planets, celestial objects, even galaxies, have been born and have died throughout time, the stage for their being, three-dimensional Euclidean space, has remained in existence infinities back.
G. Stolyarov II
I have taken all knowledge to be my province.
Francis Bacon
To know truly is to know by causes.
Francis Bacon
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
Francis Bacon
Constancy is the foundation of virtue.
Francis Bacon
For whatever deserves to exist deserves also to be known, for knowledge is the image of existence; and things mean and splendid exist alike.
Francis Bacon
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
Francis Bacon
A cripple in the right way may beat a racer in the wrong one. Nay, the fleeter and better the racer is, who hath once missed his way, the farther he leaveth it behind.
Francis Bacon
He that seeketh to be eminent amongst able men hath a great task; but that is ever good for the public. But he that plots to be the only figure amongst ciphers is the decay of a whole age.
Francis Bacon
Again men have been kept back as by a kind of enchantment from progress in science by reverence for antiquity, by the authority of men counted great in philosophy, and then by general consent.
Francis Bacon
We do not hear the term 'compassionate' applied to business executives or entrepreneurs, certainly not when they are engaged in their normal work. Yet in terms of results in the measurable form of jobs created, lives enriched, communities built, living standards raised, and poverty healed, a handful of capitalists has done infinitely more for mankind than all the self-serving politicians, academics, social workers, and religionists who march under the banner of 'compassion.'
Nathaniel Branden
If we do not believe in ourselves- neither in our efficacy nor in our goodness- the universe is a frightening place.
Nathaniel Branden
Positive self-esteem operates as, in effect, the immune system of the consciousness, providing resistance, strength, and a capacity for regeneration. When self-esteem is low, our resilience in the face of life's adversities is diminished. We crumble before vicissitudes that a healthier sense of self could vanquish. We tend to be more influenced by the desire to avoid pain than to experience joy. Negatives have more power over us than positives.
Nathaniel Branden
The natural inclination of a child is to take pleasure in the use of the mind no less than of the body. The child's primary business is learning. It is also the primary entertainment. To retain that orientation into adulthood, so that consciousness is not a burden but a joy, is the mark of the successfully developed human being.
Nathaniel Branden
Persons of high self-esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others; they do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard. Their joy is being who they are, not in being better than someone else.
Nathaniel Branden
It is generally recognized that creativity requires leisure, an absence of rush, time for the mind and imagination to float and wander and roam, time for the individual to descend into the depths of his or her psyche, to be available to barely audible signals rustling for attention. Long periods of time may pass in which nothing seems to be happening. But we know that kind of space must be created if the mind is to leap out of its accustomed ruts, to part from the mechanical, the known, the familiar, the standard, and generate a leap into the new.
Nathaniel Branden
Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness. They are more willing to follow their own vision, even when it takes them far from the mainland of the human community. Unexplored places do not frighten them- or not, at any rate, as much as they frighten those around them. This is one of the secrets of their power. That which we call 'genius' has a great deal to do with courage and daring, a great deal to do with nerve.
Nathaniel Branden
Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves.
Nathaniel Branden
|
