quotes reflecting the social

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Quotes reflecting the Social Richard Fortey Conviction provokes perceptual optimism, just as skepticism taken to extremes will disavow the obvious. (Life, an unauthorized biography.) George Santayana Religions are the great fairy-tales of the conscience. (The Philosophy of Santayana.) Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject. Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience. The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.

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Most philosophy and written thought that we can relate to reflects our social role. Even all Ten Commandments can be viewed as social instructions. The quotes collected here have resonated in my mind, I believe they are related to our higher ethics.

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Ourselves as a social group

Quotes reflecting the Social

Richard Fortey

Conviction provokes perceptual optimism, just as skepticism taken to extremes will disavow the obvious. (Life, an unauthorized biography.)

George Santayana

Religions are the great fairy-tales of the conscience. (The Philosophy of Santayana.)

Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.

The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.

Jacques Casanova de Seingalt (Memoirs)

No doubt a time will come when society, more enlightened and therefore more reasonable. Will acknowledge that noble feelings, honour and heroism can be found in every condition of life as easily as in a class the blood of which is not always exempt from the taint of a misalliance.

A government wishing to establish on a firm basis the prosperity of trade must give commerce full liberty, only being careful to prevent the frauds which private interests, often wrongly understood, might invent at the expense of public and general interests. (Ch:28)

A poor man will seek in vain for true compassion at the rich mans doors; what he receives is as a sacrifice to ostentation, and not true benevolence. (ch 71 memoirs)

Tacitus (regarding Agricola)

Let it be clear to those who insist on admiring disobedience that even under bad emperors men can be great, and that a decent regard for authority, if backed by industry and energy, can reach the peak of distinction.

Aristotle

Justice and equity are therefore the same thing, and both are good, though equity is the better.

Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.

Man is by nature a political animal.

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.

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

The gods too are fond of a joke.

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.

We make war that we may live in peace.

Anon

I am not banging a drum for any religion, it doesnt matter what religion or no religion you have, but what you know or have been taught about God and the Universe is now, at this brief time you have, your only channel to your personal God. You may have rejected what you have been taught or acquired, but the set of beliefs and practices you did acquire have become your only way to or language to communicate to your unique God. This religion may not be perfect in your eyes, but its all youve got. Dont throw this skill away and leave yourself destitute and alone in this cold universe. Use what you have to communicate to your God whatever language you have, be it Catholic, Hindu, Baptist, Sunni, Episcopalian, Jewish, Lutheran, Shi-it, whatever. Use it with all its faults, you are probably far too old to learn a new language.

Western freedom of conscience and speech has been paid for in the blood of protestant martyrs. Society benefited as much by this religious revolution as it did by all the other advances in knowledge up to that point combined; it gave the individual the right to challenge dogma and examine the world without prejudice.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach Little evil would be done in the world if evil never could be done in the name of good.

Thomas Jefferson

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property - until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."James Payne

A discoverer is persona non grata in academia. Leaving academia cost me dearly in income and status, but for my own intellectual development and emotional well-being it was the smartest thing I ever did.

David Davis (former UK shadow home secretary on repeal of the Public Order Act) The simple truth is that in a free society, there is no right not to be offended. For centuries, freedom of speech has been a vital part of British life, and repealing this law will reinstate that right."

Robert D. Crassweller, (Quoted in Pern and the Enigmas of Argentina.)

Dont you see you poor fool, that whoevers got the most dough is right? That honors sold for cash, and morals for pennies? That no truth can withstand two bucks?

Abraham Lincoln

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and true maxim that 'a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.' So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause is really a good one.

Neal Ascherson (Black Sea P 24)

All human populations are in some sense immigrants. All hostility between different cultures in one place has an aspect of classic immigrant grudge against the next boatload approaching the shore. To defend ones home and fields and ancestral graves against invasion seems a right. But to claim unique possession to compound the fact of settlement with the aspect of a landscape into an abstract of eternal and immutable ownership is a joke.

(Black Sea P 64)

In the fifth century world, their society (Greek) was unique in its exclusive, nervous maleness, but this Greek exception was transmitted and transformed into the rule for the centralized imperial societies which were to follow. The identification of civilization with a totally male-dominated society was adopted by the Roman Empire, together with its corollary that political authority for women was a sure mark of barbarism. It was only to be expected that savages like the Iceni in Britain would choose Boudicca to lead their rebellion against Roman occupation, or that the Gaulish women with huge white arms as Ammianus Marcellinus wrote in the forth century AD would pitch in to save their husbands in a brawl. From the Roman Empire, the tradition of male authority flowed into the Roman Catholic Church, uniting with the Judaic pattern of patriarchy. In the Church of England today the addled dregs of a classical education lie at the bottom of the deepest resentments against the admission of women to the priesthood: a woman at the altar is uncivilized.

Fedorovich Chesnok (Neal Ascherson Black Sea P 91)

Culture is what matters for identity, not ethnicity and not money either.

Renate Rolle (The world of the Scythians archeologist writing about Scythian warrior women, of 3000-5000 years ago. sometimes called Amazons by the Greeks of that time.)

Because their physical training was so varied, the physique of these fighting women would in no way have resembled that of the mannish women sometimes produced nowadays by intensive training for one particular competitive sport ... These man-killers were, however, for all that no less aware of their femininity and wished to retain their charms in the land of the dead they all have jewellery and mirrors, decorated according to the womens individual social rank; those interested in cosmetics also have make-up of various colors and also scent bottles. Alfred P Sloan (My years with General Motors)

I have never believed that a group as such could manage anything. A group can make policy, but only individuals can administer policy. (Ch 7)

if we had the means to review and judge the effectiveness of operations, we could safely leave the prosecution of those operations to the men in charge of them. The means as it turned out was a method of financial control which converted the broad principle of return on investment into one of the important working instruments for measuring the operations of the divisions. The basic elements of financial control in General Motors are cost, price, volume, and rate of return on investment. (Ch 8)

Mr Brown Defined return on investment as a function of the profit margin and the rate of turnover of invested capital. (Multiply one by the other equals the per cent return on investment.) (Ch 8)

Quoting Harley Earl (Key innovator of US car styling): You can design a car so that every time you get into it, its a relief you have a little vacation for a while (Ch 15)

Adelle Davis (Lets have healthy children, first published 1959)

Smorgasbord for babies. You women who worry about introducing solids might feel more relaxed if you knew of an experiment conducted years ago by Dr Clara M Davis. Some 18 orphans, all six months old, were allowed to select their own diets, even though none had tasted any food except a milk formula. They could have anything they wished from a wide variety of natural foods: sweet and sour whole milk; buttermilk; hard cooked eggs; various meats, fish, and fish roe; a variety of cooked cereals; fruit juices, and raw and cooked vegetables and fruit. No food was salted, but salt was kept on the trays. Foods were not combined in any way; for example, grains were served only as a cereal, not as bread.

Each baby was fed separately and was not allowed to watch while others ate; imitation, therefore, was ruled out. Although a nurse was with each child during his meal, no attempt was made to offer him food; if a baby tried to drink milk from a cup which he could not easily handle, the nurse would help but nothing more. All foods were weighed before being served, and any food left or dropped on bibs or floor was collected and weighed.

Many interesting points were brought out by this experiment. One baby, allergic to egg white, carefully separated yolks from whites, ate the yolks, and tossed the whites on the flour. A child whose bone structure was poor drank cod-liver oil of his own free will 113 times, or until his bones were considered normal. All of the babies went on food binges. They would sometimes drink quarts of milk one day and eat little else; the next day they would perhaps scarcely taste milk. One child ate 11 eggs at one meal; another ate 13 bananas at one time. Again and again certain foods would be avoided for a period and then eaten heartily. The salt would sometimes not be touched for days and then eaten by the handful, even though the children grimaced as they ate it.

On one day a child would eat little food of any kind; the next day he might eat tremendous quantities.

Taken on the basis of day to day, the diets were lopsided indeed. When the total food consumption over a period of months was studied, however, it was found that the children ate foods supplying the nutrients they needed. No child was ill during the experiment or suffered the slightest deviation from health; none developed any allergy or infection.

This experiment showed that if foods are unrefined and rich in nutrients, it is safe to allow a child to eat as much as he desires without fear of allergies or digestive upsets; and that if a variety of nutritious foods is offered without one grain of sugar or other refined food, a child will probably take good care of himself. It also showed that when children are not urged to eat and are not scolded, nagged, or prodded during meals, they eat heartily of their own accord. During the entire experiment not one word about a food was ever uttered while the child ate, a record few families could match.

In a similar recent experiment, children from 18 months to three years old were allowed free choice of wholesome foods. Again it was shown that if no refined foods were allowed, the childrens own innate wisdom directed them to select foods which met their nutritional requirements and built superb health.

Ingo Swann (from Remote ViewingThe Real Story)

We take "circumstances" for granted, so much so that we seldom look very deeply into them. In general, most people seem to believe that circumstances are separate from themselves, and that whether they can control and manage them depends on the individual involved. However, if one studies the dynamics of circumstances, it appears that there are many levels or strata of them, and that there are "local" circumstances and "non-local" ones.

It can also be shown that there are continuums of circumstances which transcend generations of born bio-bodies and suck millions into their workings and effects. As but one example -- the war-making continuum which sucks millions into it, most of which want to be no part of it and especially not suffer from its effects.

The implication involved here is quite alien in contemporary terms, because it is generally believed, sometimes even insisted upon, that each individual has the power to self-direct their own lives regardless of surrounding circumstances. Consider, however, getting sucked into the circumstances of love or hate, of poverty or stupidity or power games-playing which have overshadowed humanity since Day One, and for which no permanent cures have ever been found. On the one hand, many will say that individuals are responsible for these. But on the other hand, many get sucked into them, adapting their perceptions and response-thinking to them. Many are born into circumstances not of their own making -- but learn to emulate them anyway....When individuals become incorporated INTO circumstances, then they function as factors WITHIN the circumstances.And, indeed, the realization of this appears when anyone says "I got caught up in circumstances" -- which is the same as saying that one got sucked into them.

.This concept is exceedingly difficult for Westerners to entertain -- because the concept of complete individuality is paramount in the West and greatly elevated above the concept on on-going circumstances with life and power of their own.

..What I am of course seeking to establish is that all of us swim in an ocean of on-going circumstances equally as do the fish swim in an ocean of water. If the fish was asked to describe its environment, it would point out everything except the water -- because it is so omnipresent as to be unnoticeable.

.The ocean of water and the ocean of circumstances consist of currents, eddies, strata, states, conditions and continuums, any of which one can "get caught up in" or sucked into -- and all of which remove us from our status as discrete, completely independent individuals. Indeed, if you look at your own status aside from your conviction of your individuality, you can probably perceive the circumstances within which you are incorporated and which largely are determining what you fondly refer to as your life and your realities.

..The idea that circumstances, especially on-going ones, themselves condition and determine is uncomfortable and characterized by many very subtle aspects which escape the notice of most. On the other hand, and as a reality check here, it is vividly recognized that social management or control is achieved NOT by managing or controlling people -- but the managing (or attempting to do so) situation-like circumstances within which social populations ARE incorporated. It is also broadly recognized that those with power within on-going circumstances generally will manage and control them for their own benefit FIRST. Thus, although it is hardly ever stated, or even permitted to be stated, all others become "pieces" within the circumstances managed or controlled by others.

Ingo Swann (Remote Viewing Ch 6 Cleve Backster)

A mob was congregated around Backster in Zelda's little kitchen, and he had been backed into a small space by the refrigerator and a corner. I wedged myself into the Backster groupies, sipped wine and listened to the talk. Finally I had the courage to ask if I could come to his lab to see. He said "Yes."

And with this, the direction of my life changed forevermore -- although I had not a clue at that innocent moment. So, a few days later I made my way to Backster's lab and lie-detection school just off Broadway near Times Square. The plant experiment room was a smallish, gray cubicle furnished with steel desks, galvanometers and polygraph equipment. And a stately DRACAENA MASSENGEANA, one of the plants which had officially ushered in the age of sentient plant reactions. It was about five feet tall and already hooked into the polygraphs.

But there were only two people present: Backster and I. So I asked: "Are you going to influence the plant?"

"No," he replied, "you are."

I protested that I had no idea how to influence plants. But he smiled and said that all I had to do was TO THINK of harming it. "Just think of lighting a match with the intent of burning one of its leaves." So, I thought as much while staring at the plant. And Behold! The polygraph needle went haywire -- so much so that the tracing went off the paper graph sheet. Backster, typically cool as a cucumber, now seemed to get a little excited. "Can you do that again?"

So I tried again, and bingo by Ingo! He asked me to keep on doing it. But after a few more attempts the polygraph needle started not to react as much and finally didn't at all.

"What does THAT mean," I asked.

"You tell me."

Then a very eerie thought occurred to me, so astonishing that it caused goosebumps. "Do you mean," I asked, "that it has LEARNED that I'm not serious about really burning its leaf? So that it now knows it need not be alarmed."

Backster smiled. "YOU said it, I didn't. Try another kind of harmful thought." So I thought of putting acid in the plant's pot. Bingo! But the same "learning curve" soon repeated itself. Now I already understood in my own "reality" that plants are sentient and telepathic, as all plant lovers know who talk to their plants.But that plants could LEARN to recognize between true and artificial human intent came as a thunderbolt! Among all this astonishment I came across the concept of the "learning curve" which ultimately was to play THE feature role in the development of remote viewing.Martin Samuel (Times writer on football)

England, and the English, are frequently painted as parochial and xenophobic, yet it is those beyond these shores, most specifically Blatter and Platini, the Uefa president, who are most likely to fall into intellectual shorthand, viewing all outsiders as one, and as a threat.

Libby Purves (Times writer, on exhumation of the remains of Cardinal Newman)Oh, enough! Even as a genuinely devout Catholic schoolchild I hated this stuff, and I hate it more now. The Church's weird horror of fleshly things (unmarried or contracepted sex, gay love) is nastily counterpointed by its affection for cadavers. I know the theology, I accept that there is a distinction between voodoo paganism and the more complex ideas formulated by St Jerome and Thomas Aquinas. They say that relics are not worshipped in themselves but are an aid to veneration of people whose bodies were the temples and instruments of the Holy Spirit.

Fine. Save a well-thumbed prayerbook if you will, or a lock of hair. But these creepy exhumations feed the superstitious magical instincts of religion, not the spiritual and humane ones.

Ambrose Bierce

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.

Spike Milligan (Puckoon Ch. 5, regarding the ugliness of Belfast)

safe in its bureaucratic cocoon, we had a new vandalism of authority, power without conscience or taste

05/18/1872 - 02/02/1970,

1 Quote" \t "_blank" Bertrand Russell

War doesn't determine who's right - only who's left.Socrates

I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person.

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

The shortest and surest way to live with honour in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be; and if we observe, we shall find, that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice of them.

Minette Marrin (Times 8 June 08)

..the obstinate folly of generations of teachers and theorists of education. Obsessed with equality and social engineering, they refused to recognise the simple truth that children and students vary. Children are born with different abilities, into different environments, which exaggerate those differences: ignoring those differences is no way to help them all, nor is clumsy social engineering.

Imposing one kind of school, one class and one syllabus on everyone, in an attempt to iron out those differences, has been tragically wrong. Encouraging everyone to think they can get a university degree is unforgivably discouraging to the majority of young people who cant and dont.

The result has been a school system that suits almost nobody and public exams that mean almost nothing quality has been sacrificed to the pursuit of equality. It is shameful.

Leo Gomes

While modern technology has given people powerful new communication tools, it apparently can do nothing to alter the fact that many people have nothing useful to say

Napoleon

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

Thomas Paine

That government is best which governs least.Abigail Van Buren

If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.

The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.

George Washington

Few people have the virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

Winston Churchill

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

Morgen JahnkeScientists now know that radium damages bone marrow particularly, because the body treats it as calcium, depositing it in the bones and providing it easy access to the marrow.

W. Somerset Maugham

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.

Art is merely the refuge, which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.

Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

Daniel Finkelstein on February 12, 2008

I wonder whether the Archbishop of Canterbury has heard of Lina Joy?

Since Rowan Williams made his extraordinary intervention I have been in correspondence with Malaysians with direct experience of living under a parallel system of state and Sharia.

There have been numerous disputes concerning the correct courts to be used in different cases.

One of the most famous controversies concerns Lina Joy. Actually that's only her name now, her Christian name. Her birth name is Azlina Jailani, and she was born a Muslim.

In 1981 Lina Joy became a Christian and she is trying to have herself declared as such on her identity card, her MyKad. One reason is that she wishes to marry her Christian boyfriend and it is illegal for her to do this while she remains classified as a Muslim.

However her attempts to have her conversion recognised have failed.

The civil courts, and finally the highest court - the Federal court - have ruled that she can't decide on her religion for herself. She has to to be given approval by the Islamic courts. Which, of course, is not forthcoming.

As the decision was announced last May, outside the federal courts a crowd chanted Allahu Akhbar.

This is not the only type of case, by any means, where the joint jurisdiction poses fundamental problems of human rights. Another type concerns what is known as body snatching.

The conversion of non-Muslims near death without the knowledge of their families has caused fierce rows. One reason, according to my correspondents, is that conversion changes the destination of any inheritance with Islamic courts deciding and inherited assets flowing only to Muslim relatives or the community.

Divorce battles raise similar questions. Conversion by the father in the run-up to a divorce gives him crucial advantages - he gets custody, turns the children into Muslims and prevents his wife using the civil courts.

Running a dual court system produces extraordinary practical difficulties and the opportunity for human rights abuses. Just ask the campaigners in Malaysia.

Ken Urquhart (commenting on David Miscavige, the leader of the Church of Scientology)We could agree that Miscavige himself is in a Condition of Below Condition, the formula for which we do not have. I suggest one, neither seriously nor in jest, but in the spirit of "If the cap fits, wear it":

Go away.

Go very, very, very far away.

Go further away.

Figure out how to become a member of the human race.

Start coming back step-by-step on your own.

Dont ever consider lying to yourself again.

Permit yourself to go through the horrors, on a very slow gradient, of actually being truly in session with an auditor.

Repeat from #1 until #7 produces honest-to-goodness case gain and honest return to the human race.

Re-program.

Ultimately, what David Miscavige does is largely up to him.Ayn Rand

Mans motive power is his moral code. (Atlas Shrugged P445)

A prisoner brought to trial can defend himself only if there is an objective principle of justice recognized by his judges, a principle upholding his rights, which they may not violate and which he can invoke. (Atlas Shrugged P477)

There is no way to disarm a man except through guilt. Through that which he himself has accepted as guilt. If he has ever stolen a dime, you can impose on him the punishment intended for a bank robber and he will take it. (Atlas Shrugged P548)

Those parasites who assume a sickening air of moral self-righteousness whenever they utter the standard bromides about their concern for the welfare of others. (Atlas Shrugged P659)

He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects the deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience or to fake- a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement . (Atlas Shrugged P490)

Litigants obey the verdict of a tribunal solely on the premise that there is an objective rule of conduct, which they both accept. . (Atlas Shrugged P743)

If there are degrees of damnation, the scientist who places his mind in the services of brute force is the longest-range murderer on earth. . (Atlas Shrugged P745)

There is no conflict, and no call to sacrifice, and no man is a threat to the aims of another if men understand that reality is an absolute not to be faked, that lies do not work, that the unearned cannot be had, that the undeserved cannot be given, that the destruction of a value which is will not bring value to that which isnt. The businessman who wishes to gain a market by throttling a superior competitor, the worker who wants a share of his employers wealth, the artist who envies a rivals higher talent theyre all wishing facts out of existence, and destruction is the only means of their wish. . (Atlas Shrugged P798)

If my love of truth is left as my only possession, then the greater the loss behind me, the greater the pride I may take in the price I have paid for that love. My pride and my power of vision were all I owned when I started and whatever I achieved, was achieved by means of them. Both are greater now. . (Atlas Shrugged P860)

He knew that they held him through nothing but his reluctance to hurt them, his fear of their pain. . (Atlas Shrugged P971)

You have cried that mans sins are destroying the world and you have cursed human nature for its unwillingness to practice the virtues you demanded. Since virtue, to you, consists of sacrifices, you have demanded more sacrifices at every successive disaster, In the name of a return to morality, you have sacrificed all of those evils which you held as the cause of your plight. You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self- esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty. . (Atlas Shrugged P1010)

Mans mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. . (Atlas Shrugged P1012)

To think is an act of choice. (Atlas Shrugged P1012)

There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe, Existence or non-existence (Atlas Shrugged P1012)

A contradiction cannot exist. An atom is itself, and so is the universe; neither can contradict its own identity; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in ones thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate ones mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality. (Atlas Shrugged P1016)

Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, mans only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth. (Atlas Shrugged P1017)

The alleged short cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short circuit destroying the mind (Atlas Shrugged P1018)

The bottom of the pit at the end of that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices (Atlas Shrugged P1020)

Mans consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit ones purpose, of remaking the earth in the image of ones values (Atlas Shrugged P1020)

That which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If a man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will he is neither good nor evil: a robot is amoral. To hold, as a mans sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold a mans nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. (Atlas Shrugged P1025)

You had known the independence of a rational consciousness facing an open universe. That is the paradise you have lost, which you seek which is yours for the taking. (Atlas Shrugged P1058)

Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. (Atlas Shrugged P1058)

Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality not the degree of your intelligence. (Atlas Shrugged P1059)

The machine, the frozen form of a living intelligence, is the power that expands the potential of your life by raising the productivity of your time. (Atlas Shrugged P1064)

All life is a purposeful struggle, and your only choice is the choice of a goal. (Atlas Shrugged P1068)

The removal of a threat is not a payment, the negation of a negative is not a rewardthe offer not to murder me is not a value. (Atlas Shrugged P1102

If you had blood poisoning, would you adjust to it or act to change it? (Atlas Shrugged P1103)

Thomas Jefferson

Banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

Earnest HemingwayThe first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists. Donald Trump

I try to learn from the past, but plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. Thats where the fun is.

Murray N. Rothbard (Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy)

Businessmen or manufacturers can either be genuine free enterprisers or statists; they can either make their way on the free market or seek special government favors and privileges. They choose according to their individual preferences and values. But bankers are inherently inclined toward statism.Michael Connelly (from The Lincoln Lawyer, Page 27)

There is nothing about the law which I cherished anymore. The law school notions about virtues of the adversarial system, of the systems checks and balances, of the search for truth, had long since been eroded like the faces of statues from other civilizations. The law was not about truth, it was about negotiation, amelioration, manipulation.

W Somerset Maugham

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.

Margaret Thatcher

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

Thomas Jefferson

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Alan Ginsberg (beat generation poet)

Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.

John Mackay

(Forward to Fiat money inflation in France by Andrew Dickson White)

Legislatures are as powerless to abrogate moral and economic laws as they are to abrogate physical laws. They cannot convert wrong into right nor divorce effect from cause

James Turk (Talking with Hugo Salinas Price at Goldmoney.com)Proper Money or Sound Money is a constant form of measurement. It is some weight of precious metal.Bill Bonner

The problem, if I may simplify, is that you can never know what anything is worth unless you allow people to buy and sell freely. And if you can't know what something is worth, you can't make sensible investment decisions. You end up allocating capital to the wrong places, which leads inevitably to massive bust-ups.

Justin Raimondo (The Banksters and American Foreign Policy)

"Left" and "right" mean nothing in the current context: the real division is between government-privileged plutocrats and the rest of us. What you have to ask yourself is this: which side are you on?

Edmund Burke

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts ... the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

http://www.fmxconnect.com (Afternoon Gold Fix February 25, 2011)

While exchanges herald the benefits of electronic trading there is one thing wrong with it. Electronic trading minimizes the information leakage associated with using brokers, for sure, but it is also allows oligarchic organizations to anonymously manage price movement while hiding behind digital displays. We wont use the word manipulate, in part because of our libertarian bent, but its getting ridiculous. Where there used to be 50 5-lot thieves on the floor now there are five Too-Big-To-Fail banks with infinite fed-sponsored balance sheets doing whatever they please. The idiot locals on the floor, fragmented as they were, served to keep the big banks in check because there was transparency of price and to a large extent, the players were known. This doesnt exist anymore and we dont see an end to it. Instead of thinning the forest for the trees, technology, regulatory and economic factors have killed the saplings and destroyed market diversity. This translates to a narrow and deep liquidity pool in trading venues; god forbid if one of them fails.

(My underlining).

And the final word comes from Scott Adams (Dilbert Cartoonist)

Have you ever noticed that crazy people dont think theyre crazy? Im talking about the run-of-the-mill wackos who populate your day. They think theyre quirky or high maintenance or perfectionists, but they rarely realize they are nuts. This got me thinking, what if Im nuts and I dont know?

I started a list of all the things I do that could be construed as crazy by an unkind observer. Number one on the list is creating a list of all the things I do that could be construed as crazy by an unknown observer Number two was wondering if writing number one is redundant, since one is obviously a number. Number three or as I call it now, just three, was overanalyzing everything. Soon I had over forty items that were about the list itself. I decided those dont count.