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726 I believe in always having goals and always setting them high.-Sam Walton
725 Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.-Thomas Jefferson
724 Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity’s highest callings.-Steven Pinker
723 Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.-Daniel Patrick Moynihan
722 The man I asked, whatever man one asks, does not really understand what one wants to know: or rather, he does not understand that one wants to know. He wants to do what is fitting, he is not unwilling to be candid, but at bottom he does not know the facts because they are not his language. These cultures of the East have remained fixed because they lack the language and the very habit of fact.-J Bronowski
721 ..the sanction of experienced fact has changed and shaped all the concepts of men who have felt the Scientific Revolution. A civilization cannot hold its activities apart, or put on science like a suit of clothes - a workday suit which is not good enough for Sundays.-J Bronowski
719 Beauty is a sense of harmony. Whether it's an image, a human face, a body, or a sunset, take the object which you call beautiful, as a unit [and ask yourself]: what parts is it made up of, what are its constituent elements, and are they all harmonious? If they are, the result is beautiful. If there are contradictions and clashes, the result is marred or positively ugly. -Ayn Rand
718 Epistemology is a science devoted to the discovery of the proper methods of acquiring and validating knowledge. -Ayn Rand
717 There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction. -Ayn Rand
716 That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call free will is your mind`s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character. -Ayn Rand
715 Reason integrates man's perceptions by means of forming abstractions or conceptions, thus raising man's knowledge from the perceptual level , which he shares with animals, to the conceptual level, which he alone can reach. The method which reason employs in this process is logic -- and logic is the art of non-contradictory identiication. -Ayn Rand
714 Rationality is man's basic virtue, the source of all his other virtues... The virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one`s only source of knowledge, one`s only judge of values and one's only guide to action. -Ayn Rand
713 When you clamor for public ownership of the means of production, you are clamoring for public ownership of the mind. -Ayn Rand
712 Wealth is the product of man`s capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
711 Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. -Ayn Rand
710 Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.-Ben Franklin
709 Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.-Sir Francis Bacon
708 Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.-Sir Francis Bacon
707 Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.-Sir Francis Bacon
706 Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.-Sir Francis Bacon
705 Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.-Socrates
704 I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.-Socrates
703 Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.-Socrates
702 By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.-Socrates
701 A short saying oft contains much wisdom.-Sophocles
700 Of men who have a sense of honor, more come through alive than are slain, but from those who flee comes neither glory nor any help.-Homer
699 I too shall lie in the dust when I am dead, but now let me win noble renown.-Homer
698 Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.-Homer
697 A multitude of rulers is not a good thing. Let there be one ruler, one king.-Homer
696 There are some duties we owe even to those who have wronged us. There is, after all, a limit to retribution and punishment.-Cicero
695 The absolute good is not a matter of opinion but of nature.-Cicero
694 Our span of life is brief, but is long enough for us to live well and honestly.-Cicero
693 Live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.-Cicero
692 Let your desires be ruled by reason. (Appetitus Rationi Pareat)-Cicero
691 Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.-Cicero
690 Everyone has the obligation to ponder well his own specific traits of character. He must also regulate them adequately and not wonder whether someone else's traits might suit him better. The more definitely his own a man's character is, the better it fits him.-Cicero
689 Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.-Thomas Sowell
688 Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.-Thomas Sowell
687 The ability to move their fellow creatures around like blocks of wood - and that the end results will be no different than if people had voluntarily chosen the same actions.-Thomas Sowell
686 Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.-Thomas Sowell
685 The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.-Thomas Sowell
684 If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.-Thomas Sowell
683 Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.-Cicero
682 Fretting about overpopulation, is a perfect guilt-free - indeed, sanctimonious - way for "progressives" to be racists.-P. J. O\'Rourke
681 The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.-John Maynard Keynes
680 Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.-Amendment XIII
679 The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.-Amendment IV
678 A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.-Amendment II
677 Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.-Bill of Rights
676 The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.-Amendment X
675 The king's cheese is half wasted in parings; but no matter, 'tis made of the people's milk.-Benjamin Franklin
674 One good Husband is worth two good Wives; for the scarcer things are, the more they're valued.-Benjamin Franklin
673 The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.-Confucius
672 When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it - this is knowledge.-Confucius
671 Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness.-Confucius
670 If a man takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.-Confucius
669 What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.-Confucius
668 We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act. -Charles Darwin
667 A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life. -Charles Darwin
666 Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowlege: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.-Charles Darwin
665 A nation that draws too broad a difference between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking being done by cowards and its fighting by fools.-Thucydides
664 Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than on our opinions in physics and geometry....The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.-Thomas Jefferson
663 Philosophy is the goal toward which religion was only a helplessly blind groping. The grandeur, the reverence, the exalted purity, the austere dedication to the pursuit of truth, which are commonly associated with religion, should properly belong to the field of philosophy.-Ayn Rand
662 Amicus Plato— amicus Aristoteles— magis amica veritas-Isaac Newton
661 Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.-Aristotle
660 The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.-Aristotle
659 Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.-Aristotle
658 So write as if thou wert alone in the universe, and hadst noth­ing to fear from the jealousy and prejudices of men, or – thou will fail thy end.-Julien Offray de la Mettrie
657 On slavery: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master & slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.-Thomas Jefferson
656 The course of mankind’s progress is not a straight, automatic line, but a tortuous struggle, with long detours or relapses into the stagnant night of the irrational. Mankind moves forward by the grace of those human bridges who are able to grasp and transmit, across years or centuries, the achievements men had reached – and to carry them further.-Ayn Rand
655 If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.-Isaac Newton
654 I never yet knew how it felt to think I stood in the presence of my superior. – If the presence of God were made visible immedi­ately before me, I could not abase myself.-Walt Whitman
653 As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it: the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it.-Thucydides
652 Wonders are many in the world, and the wonder of all is man. With his bit in the teeth of the storm and his faith in a fragile prow, Far he sails, where the waves leap white-fanged, wroth at his plan. And he has his will of the earth by the strength of his hand on the plough.-Sophocles
651 This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here, we are not afraid to follow truth where it may lead, nor to tolerate error so long as reason is free to combat it.-Thomas Jefferson
650 We are fools when we fail to defend civilization. The ancient Romans might as well have said, ‘Oh, the Germanic tribes have valid nationalistic and cultural aspirations. Let’s pull the legions off the Rhine, submit our differences to a multilateral peace conference chaired by the Pathan Empire and start a Vandal Studies program at the Academy in Athens.-P. J. O\'Rourke
649 As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.-William Blake
648 Seldom are men blessed with times in which they may think what they like, and say what they think.-Tacitus
647 If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius.-Michelangelo
646 Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.-Buddha
645 When enlightened men go on arguing for a long time, there is a distinct possibility that the question is not clear.-Voltaire
644 Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.-Pericles
643 Trust, but verify-Ronald Reagan
642 Two kinds of men are necessary for the spread of evil: those who speak and act without thinking, and those who think but do not speak or act.-David Veksler
641 The first key to greatness is to be in reality what we appear to be.-Socrates
640 Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.-Robert A. Heinlein
639 So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.-Bertrand Russell
638 Christianity did not come with tidings of great joy, but with a message of eternal grief. It came with the threat of everlasting torture on its lips. It meant war on earth and perdition hereafter.-Robert G. Ingersoll
637 'In God We Trust.' I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true.-Mark Twain
636 Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.-Benjamin Franklin
635 It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.-Mark Twain
634 Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?-Epicurus
633 It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him.-Arthur C. Clarke
632 After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it ....up until a hunter came along and shot him. The moral: When you're full of bull, keep ....your mouth shut.-Will Rogers
631 Don't try to have the last word. You might get it.-Robert A. Heinlein
630 When you give a lesson in meanness to a critter or a person, don't be surprised if ....they learn their lesson-Will Rogers
629 Well begun is half done.-Aristotle
628 Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.-Confucius
627 Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.-Benjamin Franklin
626 The best way to see Faith is to shut the eye of Reason.-Benjamin Franklin
625 The quality of an individual is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.-Ray Kroc
624 If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause and say, "Here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well."-Martin Luther King, Jr
623 The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.-Theodore Roosevelt
622 All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.-T. E. Lawrence
621 Loving of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has beside no meaning....Those who preach the doctrine of loving their enemies are in general the greatest prosecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches.-Thomas Paine
620 Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.-James Madison
619 Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise....During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.-James Madison
618 Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, 'this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.'-John Adams
617 There has never been a philosophy, a theory or a doctrine, that attacked (or 'limited') reason, which did not preach submission to the power of some authority.-Ayn Rand
616 Action based on reason, action therefore which is only to be understood by reason, knows only one end, the greatest pleasure of the acting individual-Ludwig von Mises
615 The philosophy called individualism is a philosophy of social cooperation and the progressive intensification of the social nexus-Ludwig von Mises
614 If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.-Ludwig von Mises
613 This, then, is freedom in the external life of man — that he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows.-Ludwig von Mises
612 Government is the only institution that can take a perfectly good piece of paper, print some noble words on it, and make it perfectly worthless.-Ludwig von Mises
611 The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours. But to win it requires total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence, which is man, for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the morality of life and yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.-Ayn Rand
610 If we truly cared about our children and future generations, instead of demagoging about them, we'd worry more about saving liberty than saving Social Security. -Walter Williams
609 The "private sector" of the economy is, in fact, the voluntary sector; and...the "public sector" is, in fact, the coercive sector. -Henry Hazlitt
608 Thinking to get at once all the gold the Goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find,- nothing. -Aesop
607 If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.-Henry Ford
606 Genius is a promontory jutting out into the future. -Victor Hugo
605 Rule your mind or it will rule you. -Horace
604 Any good practical philosophy must start out with the recognition of our having a body.-Lin Yutang
603 No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.-H.L. Mencken
602 We must think of human progress, not as of something going on in the race in general, but as something going on in a small minority, perpetually beleaguered in a few walled towns. Now and then the horde of barbarians outside breaks through, and we have an armed effort to halt the process. That is, we have a Reformation, a French Revolution, a war for democracy, a Great Awakening. The minority is decimated and driven to cover. But a few survive- and a few are enough to carry on.-H.L. Mencken
601 God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters.-H.L. Mencken
600 Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. -Adam Smith
599 Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.-Mark Twain
598 What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce. -Mark Twain
597 I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short on: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it. -Voltaire
596 When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong you cannot be too conservative. -Martin Luther King, Jr
595 Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded- here and there, now and then- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck." -Robert A. Heinlein
594 Life is of no value but as it brings us gratifications. Among the most valuable of these is rational society. It informs the mind, sweetens the temper, cheers our spirits, and promotes health. -Thomas Jefferson
593 We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals, our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties. -Thomas Jefferson
592 We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it. -Thomas Jefferson
591 Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are serviley crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blind faith. -Thomas Jefferson
590 In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot... -Thomas Jefferson
589 If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else. -Thomas Jefferson
588 And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva, in the brain of Jupiter. -Thomas Jefferson
587 If none were to have Liberty but those who understand what it is, there would not be many freed Men in the world.-Lord Halifax
586 I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as the facts are shown to be opposed to it. -Charles Darwin
585 The mind of each man is the man himself. -Marcus Tullius Cicero
584 Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them. -Frederick Douglass
583 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
582 Watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves. -Andrew Carnegie
581 One of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity. -Andrew Carnegie
580 A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. -Francis Bacon
579 Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.-Francis Bacon
578 The mind never fully accepts any convictions that it does not owe to its own efforts. -Frederic Bastiat
577 People are beginning to realize that the apparatus of government is costly. But what they do not know is that the burden falls inevitably on them.-Frederic Bastiat
576 In war, the stronger overcomes the weaker. In business, the stronger imparts strength to the weaker. -Frederic Bastiat
575 The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended. -Frederic Bastiat
574 Value is not intrinsic; it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment. -Ludwig von Mises
573 The class of those who have the ability to think their own thoughts is separated by an unbridgeable gulf from the class of those who cannot. -Ludwig von Mises
572 Society is joint action and cooperation in which each participant sees the other partner's success as a means for the attainment of his own. -Ludwig von Mises
571 People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.-Ludwig von Mises
570 Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.-Ludwig von Mises
569 Reason's biological function is to preserve and promote life and to postpone its extinction as long as possible. Thinking and acting are not contrary to nature; they are, rather, the foremost features of man's nature. The most appropriate description of man as differentiated from nonhuman beings is: a being purposively struggling against the forces adverse to his life.-Ludwig von Mises
568 Reason is the main resource of man in his struggle for survival. -Ludwig von Mises
567 Human civilization is not something achieved against nature; it is rather the outcome of the working of the innate qualities of man. -Ludwig von Mises
566 Reason and action are congeneric and homogenous, two aspects of the same phenomenon. -Ludwig von Mises
565 In the world of reality, life, and human action there is no such thing as interests independent of ideas, preceding them temporarily and logically. What a man considers his interest is the result of his ideas.-Ludwig von Mises
564 The first thing a genius needs is to breath free air.-Ludwig von Mises
563 Mark Twain's answer to a would-be writer: "Young Author"--Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because the phosphorus in it makes brain. So far you are correct. But I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat--at least not with certainty. If the specimen composition you send is about your fair usual average, I suggest that perhaps a couple of whales would be all you would want for the present. Not the largest kind, but simply good middling-sized whales.-Mark Twain
562 The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor.-Mark Twain
561 We are called the nation of inventors. And we are. We could still claim that title and wear its loftiest honors if we had stopped with the first thing we ever invented, which was human liberty.-Mark Twain
560 When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty. -George Bernard Shaw
559 Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.-Mark Twain
558 Western technology made slavery unnecessary; Western ideas made it intolerable.-Bernard Lewis
557 Let no one when young delay to study philosophy, nor when he is old grow weary of his study. For no one can come to early or too late to secure the health of his soul.-Epicurus
556 There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.-Cicero
555 When words lose their meaning, people lose their liberty.-Confucius
554 In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always pre­vails.-Ludwig von Mises
553 History is philosophy teaching by example.-Lord Bolingbroke
552 We love our friends dearly, but we love the truth more.-Aristotle
551 A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.-Granville Hicks
550 People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.-George Orwell
549 When you see a successful business, someone once made a coura­geous decision.-Peter Drucker
548 The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in Shadow than in the Church.-Ferdinand Magellan
547 In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.-Galileo Galilei
546 He repays a teacher badly who always remains a student.-(Unknown)
545 Let us not talk of them; but look thou and pass’ These innumerable seekers of safety first, and last, who take no risk either of suffering in a good cause or of scandal in a bad one, are here manifestly, nakedly, that which they were in life, the waste and rubbish of the universe, of no account to the world, unfit for Heaven and barely admitted to Hell. They have no need to die, for they ‘never were alive.-Dante Alighieri
544 To find yourself, think for yourself.-Socrates
543 Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.-Leonardo da Vinci
542 I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.-Thomas Edison
541 Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.-Aristotle
540 I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.-Aristotle
539 It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.-Aristotle
538 Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.-Aristotle
537 The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.-Aristotle
536 Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.-Aristotle
535 We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.-Aristotle
534 Happiness depends upon ourselves.-Aristotle
533 Reason and morality are the only weapons that determine the course of history; the collectivists dropped them because they had no right to carry them. Pick them up; you have.-Ayn Rand
532 Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.-Ayn Rand
531 I made my fortune on the seas, and in the mines, and in the cattle wars of the old frontier... I made it by being tougher than the toughies, and smarter than the smarties. And I made it SQUARE!-Scrooge McDuck
530 He explained why an honest building, like an honest man, had to be of one piece and one faith; what constituted the life source, the idea in any existing thing or creature, and why- if one smallest part committed treason to that idea- the thing or the creature was dead; and why the good, the high and the noble on earth was only that which kept its integrity.-Ayn Rand
529 His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, this was a man-William Shakespeare
528 If I lose mine honour, I lose myself.-William Shakespeare
527 There was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently.-William Shakespeare
526 The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief.-William Shakespeare
525 Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come-William Shakespeare
524 Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.-William Shakespeare
523 Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; The thief doth fear each bush an officer.-William Shakespeare
522 Why, then the world 's mine oyster-William Shakespeare
521 The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.-William Shakespeare
520 If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?-William Shakespeare
519 All the world 's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.-William Shakespeare
518 What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!-William Shakespeare
517 We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.-William Shakespeare
516 Don't work for my happiness, my brothers--show me yours--show me that it is possible--show me your achievement--and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.-Ayn Rand
515 Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.-Ronald Reagan
514 If the bloodbath must come, then let's get on with it!-Ronald Reagan
513 My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.-Ronald Reagan
512 Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.-Ronald Reagan
511 Responsible parenthood involves decades devoted to the child's proper nurture. To sentence a woman to bear a child against her will is an unspeakable violation of her rights: her right to liberty (to the functions of her body), her right to the pursuit of happiness, and, sometimes, her right to life itself, even as a serf. Such a sentence represents the sacrifice of the actual to the potential, of a real human being to a piece of protoplasm, which has no life in the human sense of the term. It is sheer perversion of language for people who demand this sacrifice to call themselves 'right-to-lifers.'-Leonard Peikoff
510 One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives.-Ayn Rand
509 Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours: I am willing to give this for that.-Adam Smith
508 The lion slays in the jungle by the deft stroke of his pounce. The mighty shark lashes in the sea by the harsh snap of his jaws, and the majestic eagle soars in the sky by the vast stretch of his wings; but Man, alone, lives in the universe by the sheer span of his mind.-John Andrew Recio
507 One who would have the fruit must first climb the tree.-Thomas Fuller
506 She could not have reached this white serenity except as the sum of all the colors, of all the violence she had known. -Ayn Rand
505 One has to seek Beauty and Truth, Sir! As I always say to my pupils, you have to work to the finish. There's only one kind of painting. It is the painting that presents the eye with perfection, the kind of beautiful and impeccable enamel you find in Veronese and Titian.-William Bouguereau
504 Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. -Benjamin Franklin
503 Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own self-defense?-Patrick Henry
502 Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.-Mahatma Ghandi
501 I think I understand what military fame is; to be killed on the field of battle and have your name misspelled in the newspaper.-General Sherman
500 Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! -Patrick Henry
499 Let us beware that while Soviet rulers preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination over all the peoples of the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.... I urge you to beware the temptation ... to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil. -Ronald Reagan
498 There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits on the human capacity for intelligence, imagination and wonder.-Ronald Reagan
497 We did indeed know much about your preparedness. We knew that probably every second home in your country contained firearms. We knew that your country actually had state championships for private citizens shooting military rifles. We were not fools to set foot in such quicksand.-A Japanese Admiral explains why Japan didn't invade the US mainland in WWII
496 Today's liberals wish to disarm us so they can run their evil and oppressive agenda on us. The fight against crime is just a convenient excuse to further their agenda. I don't know about you, but if you hear that Williams' guns have been taken, you'll know Williams is dead.-Walter Williams
495 Gun Control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters.-Sammy The Bull Gravano
494 Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated. -Thomas Jefferson
493 The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.-Alexander Hamilton
492 What county can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that its people preserve the spirit of resistance?-Thomas Jefferson
490 If you don't like yourself, you can't like other people.-Robert A. Heinlein
489 The greatest productive force is human selfishness.-Robert A. Heinlein
488 No matter where or what, there are makers, takers, and fakers.-Robert A. Heinlein
487 A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.-Robert A. Heinlein
486 Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.-Robert A. Heinlein
485 Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.-Frederic Bastiat
484 Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.-Thomas Sowell
483 Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.-Thomas Jefferson
482 No nation was ever ruined by trade, even seemingly the most disadvantageous.-Benjamin Franklin
481 No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.-Thomas Jefferson
478 In western civilization, the period ruled by mysticism is known as the 'Dark Ages' and the 'Middle Ages'. I will assume that you know the nature of that period and the state of human existence in those ages. The Renaissance broke the rules of the mystics. "Renaissance" means the "rebirth". Few people today will care to remind you that it was a rebirth of reason - of man's mind.-Ayn Rand
477 The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.-Ayn Rand
476 Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of "equilibrium" that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.-Ayn Rand
475 Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as a man is free to attempt to survive by any random means, as a parasite, a moocher or a looter, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment - so he is free to seek his happiness in any irrational fraud, any whim, any delusion, any mindless escape from reality, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment not to escape the consequences.-Ayn Rand
474 Just as man's physical existence was liberated when he grasped that 'nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed', so his consciousness will be liberated when grasps that nature, to be apprehended, must be obeyed - that the rules of cognition must be derived from the nature of existence and the nature, the identity, of his cognitive faculty.-Ayn Rand
472 It is the metaphysically given that must be accepted: it cannot be changed. It is the man-made that must never be accepted uncritically: it must be judged, then accepted or rejected and changed when necessary.-Ayn Rand
471 One's own independent judgment is the means by which one must choose one's actions, but it is not a moral criterion nor a moral validation; only reference to a demonstrable principle can validate one's choices.-Ayn Rand
470 Words are a lens to focus one?s mind.-Ayn Rand
469 And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: "I."-Ayn Rand
468 America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.-Ayn Rand
467 To preserve one's mind intact through a modern college education is a test of courage and endurance, but the battle is worth it and the stakes are the highest possible to man: the survival of reason. {from "The Comprachicos"}-Ayn Rand
466 Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision.-Ayn Rand
465 I made my fortune by being able to spot a certain kind of man.-Ayn Rand
464 Whether you know the shape of a pebble or the structure of a solar system, the axioms remain the same: that it exists and that you know it.-Ayn Rand
463 The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently; they are most helplessly in its power.-Ayn Rand
462 The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be.-Ayn Rand
461 No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.-Ayn Rand
460 All work is an act of philosophy.-Ayn Rand
459 We cannot fight against anything, unless we fight for something -- and what we must fight for is the supremacy of reason, and a view of man as a rational being.-Ayn Rand
458 I'm working to improve my methods, and every hour I save is an hour added to my life.-Ayn Rand
457 A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race - and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.-Ayn Rand
456 Just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends or the welfare of others - and, therefore, man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself.-Ayn Rand
455 The best verse hasn't been rhymed yet, The best house hasn't been planned, The highest peak hasn't been climbed yet, The mightiest rivers aren't spanned; Don't worry and fret, faint-hearted, The chances have just begun For the best jobs haven't been started, The best work hasn't been done. -Berton Braley
454 To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT... In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable.-National Academy of Sciences
453 An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.-Robert A. Heinlein
452 A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain - then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system? -Robert A. Heinlein
451 When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives. -Robert A. Heinlein
450 To be matter-of-fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy - and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful. -Robert A. Heinlein
449 Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything. -Robert A. Heinlein
448 Never insult anyone by accident.-Robert A. Heinlein
447 I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.-Robert A. Heinlein
446 Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy-Robert A. Heinlein
445 Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss. -Robert A. Heinlein
444 Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.-Robert A. Heinlein
443 It is not justice or equal treatment that you grant to men when you abstain equally from praising men's virtues and from condemning men's vices. When your impartial attitude declares, in effect, that neither the good nor the evil may expect anything from you - whom do you betray and whom do you encourage?-Ayn Rand
442 ...observe that in all the propaganda of the ecologists?amidst all their appeals to nature and pleas for 'harmony with nature'?there is no discussion of man's needs and the requirements of his survival. Man is treated as if he were an unnatural phenomenon. Man cannot survive in the kind of state of nature that the ecologists envision?i.e., on the level of sea urchins or polar bears...-Ayn Rand
441 An Asian peasant who labors through all of his waking hours, with tools created in Biblical times; a South American aborigine who is devoured by piranha in a jungle stream; an African who is bitten by the tsetse fly?an Arab whose teeth are green with decay in his mouth; these do live with their 'natural environment,' but are scarcely able to appreciate its beauty. Try to tell a Chinese mother, whose child is dying of cholera: 'Should one do everything one can? Of course not.' Try to tell a Russian housewife, who trudges miles on foot in sub-zero weather in order to spend hours standing in line at a state store dispensing food rations, that America is defiled by shopping centers, expressways and family cars.-Ayn Rand
440 Justice does exist in the world, whether people choose to practice it or not. The men of ability are being avenged. The avenger is reality. Its weapon is slow, silent, invisible, and men perceive it only by its consequences - by the gutted ruins and the moans of agony it leaves in its wake. The name of the weapon is: *inflation*.-Ayn Rand
438 Since time immemorial and pre-industrial, 'greed' has been the accusation hurled at the rich by the concrete-bound illiterates who were unable to conceive of the source of wealth or of the motivation of those who produce it.-Ayn Rand
437 When "the common good" of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of *some* men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.-Ayn Rand
436 Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but *by the government*: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people's savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments.-Ayn Rand
435 To the extent that a man is guided by his rational judgment, he acts in accordance with the requirements of his nature and, to that extent, succeeds in achieving a human form of survival and well-being; to the extent that he acts irrationally, he acts as his own destroyer.-Ayn Rand
434 Competition is a by-product of productive work, *not* its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, *not* by the desire to beat others.-Ayn Rand
433 Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of "equilibrium" that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.-Ayn Rand
432 Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others - misfortune is not a mortgage on achievement - failure is not a mortgage on success - suffering is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence - man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone's altar nor for anyone's cause - life is not one huge hospital.-Ayn Rand
430 Determine never to be idle...It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.-Thomas Jefferson
429 In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.-Thomas Jefferson
428 I believe in God, only I spell it Nature-Frank Lloyd Wright
427 Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.-Frank Lloyd Wright
426 I protest against the use of infinite magnitude as something completed, which in mathematics is never permissible. Infinity is merely a facon de parler, the real meaning being a limit which certain ratios approach indefinitely near, while others are permitted to increase without retriction.-Carl Friedrich Gauss
425 Pacifism is a shifty doctrin under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay--and claims a halo for his dishonesty.-Robert A. Heinlein
414 If devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.-Ayn Rand
411 Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.-Ayn Rand
410 Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual). -Ayn Rand
409 A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving. -Ayn Rand
408 They proclaim that every man is entitled to exist without labor and, the laws of reality to the contrary notwithstanding, is entitled to receive his "minimum sustenance" his food, his clothes, his shelter, with no effort on his part, as his due and his birthright. To receive it, from whom? -Ayn Rand
407 The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive. -Robert A. Heinlein
406 Never insult anyone by accident. -Robert A. Heinlein
405 One man's theology is another man's belly laugh-Robert A. Heinlein
404 One man's "magic" is another man's engineering. "Supernatural" is a null word.-Robert A. Heinlein
403 Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing - with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for the second and third place. -Robert A. Heinlein
402 No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority. -Robert A. Heinlein
401 Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. -Robert A. Heinlein
400 I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. -Robert A. Heinlein
399 Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss. -Robert A. Heinlein
398 A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity. -Robert A. Heinlein
397 Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. -Robert A. Heinlein
396 Love your country, but never trust its government.-Robert A. Heinlein
395 The taxpayer -- that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.-Ronald Reagan
394 All serious conversations gravitate towards philosophy.-Ernest Dimnet
393 Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.-H.L. Mencken
392 The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.-Norman Mailer
391 The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.-Will Rogers
390 Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add within the limits of the law, because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.-Thomas Jefferson
389 The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.-Frederic Bastiat
388 The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.-Thomas Jefferson
387 ...You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer...-Abraham Lincoln
386 For every new mouth to feed, there are two hands to produce.-Peter T. Bauer
385 Since there is no such entity as 'the public,' since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.-Ayn Rand
384 It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.-Sir Winston Churchill
383 Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence. ? In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible.-Ayn Rand
382 I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows. -Ayn Rand
380 Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!-Patrick Henry
379 I can say - not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political, and aesthetic roots - that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.-Ayn Rand
378 To save the world is the simplest thing in the world. All one has to do is think.-Leonard Peikoff
377 A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.-Ayn Rand
376 [The proud man] does not demand of himself the impossible, but he does demand every ounce of the possible. He refuses to rest content with a defective soul, shrugging in self-deprecation 'That's me.' He knows that that 'me' was created, and is alterable, by him.-Leonard Peikoff
375 We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.-H.L. Mencken
373 Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.-George Washington
372 Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.-Ayn Rand
371 I have never needed any other tool than reason, and I trust I never shall.-Thomas Paine
370 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. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person's virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one's own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut.-Ayn Rand
369 God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive.-Ayn Rand
367 Existence exists and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.-Ayn Rand
365 Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.-Thomas Jefferson
364 In the temple of his spirit, each man is alone.-Ayn Rand
363 Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is the highest political end-Lort Acton
362 You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.-Robert A. Heinlein
361 The public be damned!-Cornelius Vanderbilt
360 I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction-Ayn Rand
359 I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.-Thomas Jefferson
358 Thought does not bow to authority. -Ayn Rand
357 The unexamined life is not worth living-Socrates
356 I am a man who does not exist for others.-Ayn Rand
354 I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul-William Ernest Henly
353 You have power over your mind -- not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. It is in your power to return to life.-Marcus Aurelius
351 If you want to live a happy life, throw out the thought, "How will this seem to others?" Simply live according to your principles.-Marcus Aurelius
345 Honor that which is the best in yourself.-Marcus Aurelius
344 O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced. -Frederick Douglass
343 I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire.-Ayn Rand
340 Nobody respects an altruist, neither in privatelife nor in international affairs. An altruist is aperson who keeps sacrificing himself and his values,which means: sacrificing his friends to his enemies,his allies to his protagonists, his interests to anycry for help, his strength to anyone's weakness, hisconvictions to anyone's wishes, the truth to any lie,the good to any evil.-Ayn Rand
339 Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason.-Ayn Rand
338 There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.-Ayn Rand
337 Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.-Lord Acton
336 Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.-Ronald Reagan
335 It had been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience had proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.-Alexander Hamilton
334 Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.-John Adams
333 There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.-George Washington
332 The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.-Thomas Sowell
331 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
330 Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.-Thomas Sowell
329 What they have to discover, what all the efforts of capitalism's enemies are frantically aimed at hiding, is the fact that capitalism is not merely the 'practical,' but the only moral system in history.-Ayn Rand
328 It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens.-Adam Smith
327 One of the worst fallacies in the field of economics - propagated by Karl Marx and accepted by almost everyone today, including many businessmen - is the notion that the development of monopolies in an inescapable and intrinsic result of the operation of a free, unregulated economy. In fact, the exact opposite is true. It is a free market that makes monopolies impossible.-Nathanial Branden
326 In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions and interests dictate.-Ayn Rand
325 A gun is not an argument.-Ayn Rand
324 Whenever the legsilators endeavour to take away and destroy the power of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience..-John Locke
323 Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of an advance auction of stolen goods.-H.L. Mencken
322 I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.-Ayn Rand
321 Most bad government comes from too much government-Thomas Jefferson
320 As soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the totalitarian state.-Adam Smith
319 A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.-Barry Goldwater
318 The ideal government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone.-H.L. Mencken
316 He [King George III] has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.-Thomas Jefferson
315 What counts alone is the innovator, the dissenter, the harbinger of things unheard of, the man who rejects the traditional standards and aims at substituting new values and ideas for old ones.-Ludwig von Mises
314 All socialism involves slavery.-Herbert Spencer
313 Which nations are the happiest, most moral and most peaceful? Those among which the law intervenes least in private activity.-Frederic Bastiat
312 No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent-Abraham Lincoln
311 The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow.-Ayn Rand
310 It is futile to fight against, if one does not know what one is fighting for.-Ayn Rand
309 Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.-Ayn Rand
308 My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.-Ayn Rand
307 I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.-Ayn Rand
306 Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential-Ayn Rand
305 The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.-Ayn Rand
304 The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.-Ayn Rand
303 I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.-Ayn Rand
302 Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.-Thomas Edison
301 [Socialists and anarchists] are the stench today in the nostrils of all honest men and women. They are a poison; and I would have them go and colonize and live out their theories and eat one another up; for they produce nothing and they subsist as suckers on what honest men, frugal and industrious, produce.-John D. Rockfeller
300 A pleasant natural environment is a good - a luxury good, philosophical good, a moral goody-good, a good time for all. Whatever, we want it. If we want something, we should pay for it, with our labor or our cash. We shouldn't beg it, steal it, sit around wishing for it, or euchre the government into taking it by force.-P. J. O\'Rourke
299 Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs.-John Davis, editor of Earth First Journal
298 How many examples do we have of these bodies [of the state] set up to eliminate a problem, actually eliminating it, shutting down their operations and going home?-Gregory Sams
297 I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!-Barry Goldwater
296 The great curse of the 20th century was the inability of decent people to realize that what was unthinkable to them was both thinkable and doable by others -- like Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. Are we to wait until Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and we wake up some morning to find a couple of American cities obliterated?-Thomas Sowell
295 It is self-destructive for any society to create a situation where a baby who is born into the world today automatically has pre-existing grievances against another baby born at the same time, because of what their ancestors did centuries ago. It is hard enough to solve our own problems, without trying to solve our ancestors' problems.-Thomas Sowell
294 It is bad enough that so many people believe things without any evidence. What is worse is that some people have no conception of evidence and regard facts as just someone else's opinion.-Thomas Sowell
292 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
291 The purpose of all art is the objectification of values.-Ayn Rand
290 To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it.-Ayn Rand
289 It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.-Ayn Rand
288 Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent.-Ayn Rand
286 Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death.-Ayn Rand
279 By the same principle, the government may not give special leniency to the perpetrator of a crime, on the grounds of the nature of his ideas.-Ayn Rand
270 Businessmen are the one group that distinguishes capitalism and the American way of life from the totalitarian statism that is swallowing the rest of the world. All the other social groups- workers, farmers, professional men, scientists, soldiers- exist under dictatorships, even though they exist in chains, in terror, in misery, and in progressive self-destruction. But there is no such group as businessmen under a dictatorship. Their place is taken by armed thugs: by bureaucrats and commissars. Businessmen are the symbol of a free society- the symbol of America.-Ayn Rand
268 Ask yourself why totalitarian dictatorships find it necessary to pour money and effort into propaganda for their own helpless, chained, gagged slaves, who have no means of protest or defense. The answer is that even the humblest peasant or the lowest savage would rise in blind rebellion, were he to realize that he is being immolated, not to some incomprehensible noble purpose, but to plain, naked human evil.-Ayn Rand
267 To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.-Ayn Rand
262 America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.-Ayn Rand
261 There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.-Ayn Rand
258 Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lot of an empty mind.-Ayn Rand
257 Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where the gun begins.-Ayn Rand
254 The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in time of great moral crisis.-Dante Alighieri
253 We are currently in the midst of a complex and difficult political campaign. I call on the Western democracies and primarily on the leader of the free world, the United States: Do not repeat the dreadful mistake of 1938, when enlightened European democracies decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia for a convenient temporary solution. Do not try to appease the Arabs at our expense. This is unacceptable to us. Israel will not be Czechoslovakia. Israel will fight terrorism.-Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel
252 We should be conscious of the superiority of our civilization, which consists of a value system that has given people widespread prosperity in those countries that embrace it, and guarantees respect for human rights and religion.-Silvio Berlusconi, Italian Prime Minister
251 ...no weapon in any arsenal is as formidable as the will and the moral courage of free men and free women.-Donald Rumsfeld
250 To those who oppose war, I ask: If not now, when? How many more corpses are necessary before this country should take action?-Leonard Peikoff
249 All the reasons which made the initiation of physical force evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.-Ayn Rand
247 Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.-George Santayana
246 Half the truth is sometimes the greater lie.-Benjamin Franklin
244 I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.-Thomas Jefferson
243 When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then, Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church - and there was nobody left to be concerned.-Martin Niemoller
238 I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.-Galileo Galilei
229 Every coercive monopoly was created by government intervention into the economy: by special privileges, such as franchises or subsidies, which closed the entry of competitors into a given field, by legislative action.-Ayn Rand
228 If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose- because it contains all the others- the fact that they were the people who created the phrase to make money. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity- to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.-Ayn Rand
227 So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal wlth one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?-Ayn Rand
226 I have come here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life....It had to be said. The world is perishishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.-Ayn Rand
219 The precept: Judge not, that ye be not judged ... is an abdication of moral responsibility: it is a moral blank check one gives to others in exchange for a moral blank check one expects for oneself.-Ayn Rand
214 The Middle Ages were an era of mysticism, ruled by blind faith and blind obedience to the dogma that faith is superior to reason. The Renaissance was specifically the rebirth of reason, the liberation of man's mind, the triumph of rationality over mysticism - a faltering, incomplete, but impassioned triumph that led to the birth of science, of individualism, of freedom.-Ayn Rand
212 Do you believe in God, Andrei?No.Neither do I. But that's a favorite question of mine. An upside-down question, you know.What do you mean?Well, if I asked people whether they believed in life, they'd never understand what I meant. 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?Because, you see, 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
208 There can be no such thing as a political crime under the American system of law. Since an individual has the right to hold and to propagate any ideas he chooses (obviously including political ideas), the government may not infringe his right; it may neither penalize nor reward him for his ideas; it may not take any judicial cognizance whatever of his ideology.By the same principle, the government may not give special leniency to the perpetrator of a crime, on the grounds of the nature of his ideas.-Ayn Rand
207 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.-Ayn Rand
203 The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another.-Ayn Rand
202 Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?-Ayn Rand
193 Thinking men cannot be ruled.-Ayn Rand
191 The unphilosophical majority among men are the ones most helplessly dependent on their era's dominant ideas. In times of crises these men need the guidance of some kind of theory; but, being unfamiliar with the field of ideas, they do not know that alternatives to the popular theories are possible. They know only what they have always been taught.-Leonard Peikoff
190 The framers gave us the Second Amendment not so we could go deer or duck hunting but to give us a modicum of protection against congressional tyranny.-Walter Williams
189 A tyrant...is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.-Plato
187 The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.-Ludwig Von Mises
186 It is not conclusive proof of a doctrine's correctness that its adversaries use the police, the hangman, and violent mobs to fight it. But it is a proof of the fact that those taking recourse to violent oppression are in their subconsciousness convinced of the untenability of their own doctrines.-Ludwig Von Mises
185 The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights.-H.L. Mencken
184 When the people have no tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one.-Lord Lytton
183 Tyranny and despotism can be exercised by many, more rigourously, more vigourously, and more severely, than by one.-Andrew Johnson
182 Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day.-Thomas Jefferson
181 They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition of their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.-Thomas Jefferson
180 Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep.-Eric Hoffer
178 Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.-Robert A. Heinlein
176 It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.-Benjamin Disraeli
173 Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.-Edmund Burke
172 The tyranny of the multitude is a multiplied tyranny.-Edmund Burke
171 Any excuse will serve a tyrant.-Aesop
170 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
169 Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution- or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.-Ayn Rand
168 The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary.-Ayn Rand
167 In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.-Ayn Rand
166 Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life-Ayn Rand
165 To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love - because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.-Ayn Rand
163 Unjust laws have to be fought ideologically; they cannot be fought or corrected by means of mere disobedience and futile martyrdom.-Ayn Rand
162 Man's character is the product of his premises.-Ayn Rand
161 All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.-Thomas J. Watson
160 It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.-Voltaire
159 Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.-Mark Twain
158 Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.-Mark Twain
157 It does not do you good to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.-J.R.R. Tolkien
156 No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.-J. Michael Straczynski
155 This I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must must try to destroy the free mind, for this is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts.-John Ernst Steinbeck
154 Many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request.-Philip Stanhope
153 There is only one principle of war and that's this. Hit the other fellow, as quickly as you can, as hard as you can, where it hurts him most, when he ain't lookin'. - Sir William Slim-
152 People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.-George Bernard Shaw
151 In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion.-Carl Sagan
149 It is not the critic who counts, nor the person who points out how the strong person stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena; whose face is actually marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows great enthusiasm and great devotions, whose life is spent in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and at worst, if failure wins out, it at least wins with greatness, so that this person's place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.-Theodore Roosevelt
148 Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggy' until you can find a rock.-Will Rogers
147 Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.-Will Rogers
146 Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.-General George S. Patton
145 Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.-General George S. Patton
144 Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.-Patrick Overton
142 Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.-P. J. O\'Rourke
141 There is no squabbling so violent as between people who accept an idea yesterday, and those who will accept the same idea tomorrow.-Christopher Morley
140 Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not yet understood.-Henry Miller
139 If you want to truly understand something, try to change it.-Kurt Lewin
138 We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears.-La Rochefourauld
137 Rarely do we find men who willingly to engage in hard,solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.-Martin Luther King, Jr
136 Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.-Helen Keller
135 Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.-Erica Jong
134 One man with courage makes a majority.-Andrew Jackson
133 Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Aldous Huxley
132 There is one thing stronger than all the armies of the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.-Victor Hugo
131 The true test of intelligence is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do.-John Holt
130 Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimension.-Oliver Wendell Holmes
129 You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.-Eric Hoffer
128 When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.-Eric Hoffer
127 In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.-Eric Hoffer
125 The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps -- We must step up the stairs. --Vance Havner
124 Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have lies in this; when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort that I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.-Alexander Hamilton
123 You miss 100% of the shots you never take.-Wayne Gretsky
122 One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.-Andre Gide
121 We all sit around in a ring and suppose, while the secret sits in the center and knows.-Robert Frost
120 A liberal is man too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel.-Robert Frost
118 I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done.-Henry Ford
117 Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.-Henry Ford
116 What lies behind us and lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.-Ralph Waldo Emerson
115 Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.-Ralph Waldo Emerson
114 A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.-Dwight D. Eisenhower
113 You cannot solve current problems with current thinking. Current problems are the result of current thinking.-Albert Einstein
112 If there is not struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both moral and physical - but it must be a struggle.-Frederick Douglass
111 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.-Arthur C. Clarke
110 Nothing is as real as a dream. The world can change around you, but your dream will not. Your life may change, but your dream doesn?t have to. Responsibilities need not erase it. Duties need not obscure it. Your family and friends need not get in its way, because the dream is within you. No one can take it away.-Tom Clancey
109 Men occasionally stumble on the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.-Sir Winston Churchill
108 Before you start on the road of revenge, dig two graves.-Chinese proverb
107 Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.-Lord Byron
106 If you keep doing what you've always done, you will keep getting what you've always gotten.-Jenine Bucker
104 The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.-Woody Allen
103 A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.-Herm Albright
102 In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.-Ayn Rand
101 I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.-Ayn Rand
100 A leash is only a rope with a noose on both ends.-Ayn Rand
99 The moral precept to adopt...is: Judge, and be prepared to be judged.-Ayn Rand
98 There is no escape from the fact that men have to make choices; so long as men have to make choices, there is no escape from moral values; so long as moral values are at stake, no moral neutrality is possible. To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.-Ayn Rand
97 The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.-Ayn Rand
96 Loyalty is like rubber: one can stretch it so far and then - it snaps.-Ayn Rand
95 To rest one's case on faith means to concede that reason is on the side of one's enemies- that one has no rational arguments to offer.-Ayn Rand
94 Politics is based on three other philosophical disciplines: metaphysics, epistemology and ethics- on a theory of man's nature and of man's relationship to existence. It is only on such a base that one can formulate a consistent political theory and achieve it in practice. When, however, men attempt to rush into politics without such a base, the result is that embarrassing conglomeration of impotence, futility, inconsistency and superficiality which is loosely designated today as conservatism.-Ayn Rand
93 may the God you invented forgive you!-Ayn Rand
92 A crime is the violation of the right(s) of other men by force (or fraud). It is only the initiation of physical force against others- i.e., the recourse to violence- that can be classified as a crime in a free society (as distinguished from a civil wrong). Ideas, in a free society, are not a crime- and neither can they serve as the justification of a crime.-Ayn Rand
91 Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals- that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government- that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government.-Ayn Rand
90 Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.-Ayn Rand
89 The right of a nation to determine its own form of government does not include the right to establish a slave society (that is, to legalize the enslavement of some men by others). There is no such thing as the right to enslave. A nation can do it, just as a man can become a criminal- but neither can do it by right.-Ayn Rand
88 There are four characteristics which brand a country unmistakably as a dictatorship: one-party rule- executions without trial or with a mock trial, for political offenses- the nationalization or expropriation of private property- and censorship. A country guilty of these outrages forfeits any moral prerogatives, any claim to national rights or sovereignty, and becomes an outlaw.-Ayn Rand
87 There can be no such thing as a political crime under the American system of law. Since an individual has the right to hold and to propagate any ideas he chooses (obviously including political ideas), the government may not infringe his right; it may neither penalize nor reward him for his ideas; it may not take any judicial cognizance whatever of his ideology. By the same principle, the government may not give special leniency to the perpetrator of a crime, on the grounds of the nature of his ideas.-Ayn Rand
86 There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers.-Ayn Rand
85 Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.-Ayn Rand
84 There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.-Ayn Rand
83 The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.-Ayn Rand
82 The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial. It is the institution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree...-Ayn Rand
81 Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).-Ayn Rand
80 Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.-Ayn Rand
79 There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.-Ayn Rand
78 One can not be a traitor to anything, except to oneself.-Ayn Rand
77 Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration.-Ayn Rand
76 To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.-Ayn Rand
75 The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life-by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past-and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort.-Ayn Rand
74 Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason is his only means to gain it. Reason is the faculty that perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by his senses. The task of his senses is to give him the evidence of existence, but the task of identifying it belongs to his reason, his senses tell him only that something is, but what it is must be learned by his mind.-Ayn Rand
73 The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort.-Ayn Rand
72 Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind.-Ayn Rand
71 When personal judgement is inoperative (or forbidden), men's first concern is not how to choose, but how to justify their choice.-Ayn Rand
70 The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.-Ayn Rand
69 No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the sum of his knowledge.-Ayn Rand
68 There are only two means by which men can deal with one another: guns or logic. Force or persuasion. Those who know that they cannot win by means of logic, have always resorted to guns.-Ayn Rand
67 To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.-Ayn Rand
66 To fear to face an issue is to believe the worst is true.-Ayn Rand
65 An inventor is a man who asks 'Why?' of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.-Ayn Rand
63 If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper. When people have learned this lesson, everyone will seek his individual welfare in the general welfare. Then jealousies between man and man, city and city, province and province, nation and nation, will no longer trouble the world.-Frederic Bastiat
62 The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence... The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, and to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.-Ayn Rand
61 Do not make the mistake...of thinking that a worker is a slave and that he holds his job by his employer's permission. He does not hold it by permission - but by contract, that is, by a voluntary mutual agreement. A worker can quit his job; a slave cannot.-Ayn Rand
60 Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.-Jeff Burroughs
59 O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength! But it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.-William Shakespeare
57 Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.-William Pitt
56 The framers gave us the Second Amendment not so we could go deer or duck hunting but to give us a modicum of protection against congressional tyranny.-Walter Williams
55 The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.-Thomas Jefferson
54 There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.-Robert A. Heinlein
53 The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.-Robert A. Heinlein
52 In America, it is indispensable that every well wisher of true liberty should understand that acts of tyranny can only proceed from the public. The public, then, is to be watched, in this country, as, in other countries kings and aristocrats are to be watched.-James Fenimore Cooper
51 It makes no difference whether government controls allegedly favor the interests of labor or business, of the poor or the rich, of a special class or a special race: the results are the same. The notion that a dictatorship can benefit any one social group at the expense of others is a worn remnant of the Marxist mythology of class warfare, refuted by half a century of factual evidence. All men are victims and losers under a dictatorship; nobody wins-except the ruling clique.-Ayn Rand
50 A little government and a little luck are necessary in life; but only a fool trusts either of them.-P. J. O\'Rourke
49 It should be remembered as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only at first while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice as fast as that relaxes.-Thomas Jefferson
48 It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.-Thomas Jefferson
47 The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.-Thomas Jefferson
46 Governments will always misuse the machinery of the law as far as the state of public opinion permits.-Emile Capouya
45 The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.-William H. Borah
44 The state is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else.-Frederic Bastiat
43 A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.-Edward Abbey
42 The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders.-Ludwig Von Mises
41 Bad monetary and fiscal policy, often designed by the IMF, is the real cause of global problems. The only explanation for why government leaders continue to follow these policies is that by blaming markets, they avoid blaming themselves.-Brian S. Wesbury
40 The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.-Thomas Sowell
39 Whoever claims that economic competition represents 'survival of the fittest' in the sense of the law of the jungle, provides the clearest possible evidence of his lack of knowledge of economics.-George Reisman
38 Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear.-Ayn Rand
37 There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means.-Albert Jay Nock
36 If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.-Milton Friedman
35 As the science of economics...exploded the fallacies of every brand of utopianism, it was outlawed and stigmatized as unscientific.-Ludwig Von Mises
33 Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.-Milton Friedman
32 Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.-Sir Winston Churchill
31 The first condition for the establishment of perpetual peace is the general adoption of the principles of laissez-faire capitalism.-Ludwig Von Mises
30 The meaning of economic freedom is this: that the individual is in a position to choose the way in which he wants to integrate himself into the totality of society.-Ludwig Von Mises
29 All people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out.-Ludwig Von Mises
28 Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow grow, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.-George Washington
27 Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man or order of men-Adam Smith
25 They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.-Benjamin Franklin
23 We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.-Thomas Jefferson
22 When I say capitalism, I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez faire capitalism, with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.-Ayn Rand
21 ...And among these rights are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.-Thomas Jefferson
20 I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it-Voltaire
19 No arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women-Ronald Reagan
18 Poverty and Suffering are not due to unequal distribution of goods and resources, but to the unequal distribution of capitalism-Rush Limbaugh
17 There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.-Albert Einstein
16 Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.-Albert Einstein
15 It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.-Aristotle
14 Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.-George Orwell
13 Wit is educated insolence.-Aristotle
12 Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.-Henry Ford
11 I'll sleep when I'm dead.-Warren Zevon
10 If a man does his best, what else is there?-General George S. Patton
8 I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.-Thomas Jefferson
7 Rights are moral principles which define and protect a man's freedom of action,but impose no obligation on other men.-Ayn Rand
6 Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.-Ayn Rand
5 Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egoist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge or act. These are function of the self.-Ayn Rand
4 Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.-Ayn Rand
3 To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love - because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.-Ayn Rand
2 Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.-Ayn Rand
1 The law giver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we own.-H.G. Wells

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