“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” -Ayn Rand
“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, 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. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.” -Ayn Rand (‘Atlas Shrugged‘ 1957)
“Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some people, as appropriate and suitable to them, while the same acts are immoral for others, as inappropriate to them”-Saint Thomas Aquinas
“One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence.” -Charles Austin Beard
“The makers of our constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness… They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone – the most comprehensive of the rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”-Justice Louis D. Brandeis
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” -Benjamin Franklin
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little” -Edmund Burke
“Build people up instead of tearing them down” – Anonymous
“I, with my life, believe in enjoying what I can and seeing that some folk enjoy that too. Hell, I love it when someone laughs at one of my jokes or likes my fiction or things of that nature. I can put a grin on their face. When nothing else means much, those grins are good.” – Renegade Evolution
“History is made by minorities – or, more precisely, history is made by intellectual movements, which are created by minorities. Who belongs to these minorities? Anyone who is able and willing to actively concern himself with intellectual issues. Here, it is not quantity, but quality that counts (the quality – and consistency – of the ideas one is advocating). – Ayn Rand
“Try as I may I cannot escape the sound of suffering. Perhaps as an old man I will accept suffering with insouciance. But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them”- Julian Assange
“Do not be concerned about when one is to do good, who defines good, etc. Act in the way you do because to do otherwise would to be at odds with yourself. Being on a path true to your character carries with it a state of flow, where the thoughts about your next step come upon waking, unbidden, but welcome”- Julian Assange
“We explore…and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge…and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging others by what they say and think. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. You may stop this individual, but you can’t stop us all” – “The Mentor”
“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty” -Thomas Jefferson
“WINNING” -Charlie Sheen
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former” -Albert Einstein
“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?” -Albert Einstein
“The whore is despised by the hypocritical world because she has made a realistic assessment of her assets and does not have to rely on fraud to make a living. In an area of human relations where fraud is regular practice between the sexes, her honesty is regarded with mocking wonder.” -Angela Carter
“Why do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanised state system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right – or rather, your moral duty – to eliminate this system?” -From Leaflet 3 of the White Rose, circa 1943
“First they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.” -Martin Neimoller
“I could say to you that you do not serve the public good—that nobody’s good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices—that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation—as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won’t. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own—I would refuse, I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being’s right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!” -Ayn Rand
