In Atlas Shrugged, exposing the meaning of altruism, John Galt says:
“What passkey admits you to the moral elite? The passkey is lack of value. Whatever the value involved, it is your lack of it that gives you a claim upon those who don’t lack it. . . . To demand rewards for your virtue is selfish and immoral; it is your lack of virtue that transforms your demand into a moral right.”
"That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done."
Michelle Obama
It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master."
Ayn Rand
If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it...The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.
CHESTERTON
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
MENCKEN
The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbour and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest functionaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose discretion, it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work.
HAYEK
The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed.
BUDDHA
I am not bound to please thee with my answers.
SHAKESPEARE
You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats’ procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing. If you have been living in a world where outcomes are everything, you may have a very hard time understanding bureaucratic thinking or practices.
SOWELL
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
JEFFERSON
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means, except by getting off his back.
TOLSTOY
The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.
JEFFERSON
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. ... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion; what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.
JEFFERSON
We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man's terror scares you, turn your thoughts to the wrath of God.
CHESTERTON
Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.
CHESTERTON
The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.
RAND
We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject, for both have laboured in the search for truth, and both have helped us in finding it.
AQUINAS
Start by doing what’s necessary, then do what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
ASSISI
In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.
BUDDHA
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
BASTIAT
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
CHURCHILL
Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.
AUGUSTINE
If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don’t do it, and it won’t happen.
ERASMUS
Live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.
CICERO
Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.
CHESTERTON
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.
TWAIN
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
ARISTOTLE
One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for this.
CERVANTES
It is a grave error to suppose that a dictatorship rules a nation by means of strict, rigid laws which are obeyed and enforced with rigorous, military precision. Such a rule would be evil, but almost bearable; men could endure the harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific and stable; it is not the known that breaks men’s spirits, but the unpredictable. A dictatorship has to be capricious; it has to rule by means of the unexpected, the incomprehensible, the wantonly irrational; it has to deal not in death, but in sudden death; a state of chronic uncertainty is what men are psychologically unable to bear.
RAND
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So, throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover.
TWAIN
I would rather die of passion than of boredom.
Vincent van Gogh
It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.
CONFUCIUS
Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
CHURCHILL
The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.
ARISTOTLE
When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed.
RAND
What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create.
BUDDHA
Veni, vidi, vici.
CAESAR
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate on the present moment.
BUDDHA
I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
JEFFERSON
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.
HERACLITUS
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
JEFFERSON
He who conquers himself is the mightiest warrior.
CONFUCIUS
The earth belongs to the living; the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.
JEFFERSON
Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
LAO TZU
The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and its good-bye to the Bill of Rights.
MENCKEN
We are now, my friends, in a situation where the majority of Americans get their news and information about what is going on with their government from entities that are licensed by and subject to punishment at the hands of that very government. Nobody can truly believe that this is what our founding fathers had in mind.
BOORTZ
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
SOWELL
They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself.
RAND
Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.
Robert Louis Stevenson
I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
misattributed
Alan Greenspan
Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.
TWAIN
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
Helen Keller
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
MENCKEN
They don't think it be like it is, but it do.
Oscar Gamble
I can’t get no satisfaction.
I can’t get no, oh, no, no, no, hey, hey, hey.
That’s what I say.
Sir Michael Philip Jagger |
