 The Soviet Union suddenly collapsed in 1989, when owing to the inability of communism to create wealth, the state went bankrupt, was unable to maintain its army and hold its empire together. In France, the same thing might be happening.
Paul Belien
"France's Toll of Destruction, Brussels Journal, November 18, 2005
"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
Pardoning the Bad, is injuring the Good
Benjamin Franklin
Poor Richard's Almanac, 1748
The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
George Bernard Shaw
Investor Words Quote of the Day http://www.investorwords.com
Good... Bad... I'm the guy with the gun.
Bruce Campbell
Army of Darkness
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
To err is human, but it feels divine.
Mae West
Ross' Big Book of Bad Boy Quotes
To err is human, to repent divine, to persist devilish.
Benjamin Franklin
Poor Richard's Almanac, 1742
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
I'm passionately involved in life - to be alive, to have music, to walk, to see - it's all a miracle. Music is not a hobby not even a passion. Music is me.
Arthur Rubenstein
Pianist
The only two things a pirate will run for is money and public office.
Yosemite Sam
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
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
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
No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.
Dean Acheson
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.
Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement.
Ayn Rand
The Objectivist: September 1971
The morality of sacrifice lives on borrowed time.
Andrew Bernstein
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4433
Don, get a clue. Rand chose the dollar sign as her personal symbol. It's Objectivism's cross, its crescent, its star of David. If the dollar sign doesn't represent materialism, nothing does.
Dan Flynn
Flynnfiles.com
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.
Some hear with their ears, some with their stomachs, some with their pockets, and some hear not at all.
Kahlil Gibran
Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran
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
He brings disaster upon his nation who never sows a seed, or lays a brick, or weaves a garment, but makes politics his occupation.
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 religion is sometime a source of happiness, and I WOULD NOT DEPRIVE ANYONE OF HAPPINESS. But it is a comfort appropriate FOR THE WEAK, not for the strong. The great trouble with religion — any religion — is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak certainty of reason - BUT ONE CANNOT HAVE BOTH.
Robert Anson Heinlein
Friday
A proof of courage ? To step into someone else’s shoes!
Ciro D'Agostino
What is it that you're objecting to?
Mum
Mrs Monica Elliot
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
“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
Well, I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.
Crash Davis
Bull Durham
What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he's around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I'm semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing...he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance...Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen… and he'll get all the great women.
James L Brooks (screenwriter)
Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks) to Jane Craig (Holly Hunter) in Broadcast News (1987)
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Mahatma Gandhi
Faith in the supernatural begins as faith in the superiority of others.
Ayn Rand
GS, FNI, 200 – ARL p 158
Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
Robert Anson Heinlein
More from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long / Time Enough for Love
Faith and force . . . are corollaries: every period of history dominated by mysticism, was a period of statism, of dictatorship, of tyranny.
Ayn Rand
“Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,” PWNI, 80 – ARL p 158
Luxury is the roadmaker of progress.
Ludwig von Mises
Socialism
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
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
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
Robert A. Heinlein
Excerpts from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long/Time Enough for Love
"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"
If you don't know what your goals are, don't be surprised when you don't attain them
Nathaniel Branden
God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent--it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.
Robert Anson Heinlein
Excerpts from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long/Time Enough for Love
The federal man gets to tell you what your labours are worth, and he pays you in company scrip, promissory IOUs, except you, not he, is the lender; he is the market’s only buyer and the market’s only seller. You plays and you pays and you pays, from the sweat of your brow and the pain of your bones until the organs finally give out. So don’t go whining to me about $3 gas.It’s the $20 an hour that I am giving up to Greenspan that pisses me off – especially when Alan and his greenie whore at the network use it to mess with ... discounted working stiffs like me.
David Bond
http://www.silverminers.com/Editorials.aspx?id=1
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
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