Category: Getting to Know You
here are mine
“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
“I don't look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.” Warren Buffett
"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
“The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.” Thomas Jefferson
“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.” Thomas Jefferson
“Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.” Sydney J. Harris
“Character is much easier kept than recovered.” Thomas Paine
"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 perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing." Ayn Rand
The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism. Thomas Jefferson
"Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgement and nothing can help you escape it -- that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life." Ayn Rand
"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 nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers." Ayn Rand
"Learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness." Ayn rand
"I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.” Ayn Rand
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other." Ayn Rand
No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden. Thomas Jefferson
"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
The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live. Ayn Rand
"You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live." Ayn Rand
Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival. Thomas Jefferson
"One is that a man doesn't want people to know he's rich. Another is that he doesn't want them to learn how he got that way." Ayn Rand
A is A. Existence exists.
"The choice--the dedication to one's highest potential--is made by accepting the fact that the noblest act you have ever performed is the act of your mind in the process of grasping that two and two make four." Ayn Rand
Free societies are societies in which the right of dissent is protected. Natan Sharansky
"Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification. 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
Every generation needs a new revolution. Thomas Jefferson
"Honest people are never touchy about the matter of being trusted." Ayn Rand
One man with courage is a majority. Thomas Jefferson
"For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors -- between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it." Ayn Rand
Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives. Ronald Reagan
"Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another." Ayn Rand
Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless. Milton Friedman
"A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving." Ayn Rand
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none. Thomas Jefferson
"Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where the gun begins." Ayn Rand
It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good. Thomas Jefferson
"A house can have integrity, just like a person, and just as seldom." Ayn Rand
Believe me, the drug of freedom is universally potent. Natan Sharansky
"Show me your achievement -- and the knowledge will give me courage for mine." Ayn Rand
Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man. Thomas Jefferson
"The person who loves everybody and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind. He expects nothing of men, so no form of depravity can outrage him." Ayn Rand
The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead. Thomas Jefferson
He who knows best knows how little he knows. Thomas Jefferson
"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received--hatred. The great creators--the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors--stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The first airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won." Ayn Rand
The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind. Thomas Jefferson
"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
Power is not alluring to pure minds. Thomas Jefferson
"Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness." Ayn Rand
Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism. Thomas Jefferson
"For the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man -- the function of his reasoning mind. Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds, I am not a sacrifice on their altars." Ayn Rand
The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me. Ayn Rand
"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
Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do. Thomas Jefferson
"There is no such thing as duty. If you know that a thing is right, you want to do it. If you don't want to do it--it isn't right. If it's right and you don't want to do it--you don't know what right is and you're not a man." Ayn Rand
A people free to choose will always choose peace. Ronald Reagan
"It is futile to fight against, if one does not know what one is fighting for." Ayn Rand
Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations. Thomas Jefferson
"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
Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be. Sydney J. Harris
"The worst evil that you can do, psychologically, is to laugh at yourself. That means spitting in your own face." Ayn Rand
An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot. Thomas Paine
"What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem." Ayn Rand
It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness. Thomas Jefferson
"Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death." Ayn Rand
As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also. Thomas Jefferson
"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
Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives. Ayn Rand
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork. Milton Friedman
"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
Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it. Thomas Jefferson
"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
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. George Washington
"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
Delay is preferable to error. Thomas Jefferson
"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. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason." Ayn Rand
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Thomas Jefferson
An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes. Thomas Jefferson
"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
Beware of geeks bearing formulas. Warren Buffett
"No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy Nobody respects an altruist, neither in private life nor in international affairs. An altruist is a person who keeps sacrificing himself and his values, which means: sacrificing his friends to his enemies, his allies to his protagonists, his interests to any cry for help, his strength to anyone's weakness,
his convictions to anyone's wishes, the truth to any lie, the good to any evil." Ayn Rand
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. Abraham Lincoln
"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
I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build. Ayn Rand
"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
"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
"The moral precept to adopt... is: Judge, and be prepared to be judged." Ayn Rand
"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
"The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live." ayn Rand
"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
"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
"Thought does not bow to authority." Ayn Rand
Everyone feels fear, those with courage just act despite it Remember: “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily, To not dare is to lose oneself!!! - Unknown
"Thought does not bow to authority." Ayn Rand
"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
"To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality." Ayn Rand
"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
"Unjust laws have to be fought ideologically; they cannot be fought or corrected by means of mere disobedience and futile martyrdom." ayn Rand
"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
"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
"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
"I want to see, real, living, and in the hours of my own days, that glory I create as an illusion. I want it real. I want to know that there is someone, somewhere, who wants it, too. Or else what is the use of seeing it, and working, and burning oneself for an impossible vision? A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry." Ayn rand
Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. Thomas Jefferson
"Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security. Thomas Jefferson
"My dear Doctor, this is a time for observation, not for talk." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society. Thomas Jefferson
"I confess that I have been as blind as a mole, but it is better to learn wisdom late, than never to learn it at all" Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"I can't make bricks without clay." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery? Saint Augustine
"My line of thoughts about dogs is analogous. A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones. And their passing moods may reflect the passing moods of others." SIR Arthur Conan Doyle
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. Thomas Jefferson
"It has been a case for intellectual deduction, but when this original intellectual deduction is confirmed point by point by quite a number of independent incidents, then the subjective becomes objective and we can say confidently that we have reached our goal. I had, in fact, reached it before we left Baker Street, and the rest has merely been observation and confirmation." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place. Thomas Jefferson
"It is usually wiser to tell the truth. But why did you lie to him?" Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government. Thomas Jefferson
"What indeed? It is Art for Art's sake, Watson. I suppose when you doctored you found yourself studying cases without thought of a fee?" Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory. Thomas Jefferson
"Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last. This is an instructive case. There is neither money nor credit in it, and yet one would wish to tidy it up. When dusk comes we should find ourselves one stage advanced in our investigation." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law. Ayn Rand
"I mean to find her. I'm going through this house till I do find her." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. Thomas Jefferson
"Very good! Shall we argue about it here in public, or talk it over in your parlour?" Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. Thomas Jefferson
"Why be normal?" Anonymous
"It is one of those instances where the reasoner can produce an effect which seems remarkable to his neighbour, because the latter has missed the one little point which is the basis of the deduction. The same may be said, my dear fellow, for the effect of some of these little sketches of yours, which is entirely meretricious, depending as it does upon your retaining in your own hands some factors in the problem which are never imparted to the reader." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"It seemed to me that a careful examination of the room and the lawn might possibly reveal some traces of this mysterious individual. You know my methods, Watson. There was not one of them which I did not apply to the inquiry. And it ended by my discovering traces, but very different ones from those which I had expected." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? We know that he did not come through the door, the window, or the chimney. We also know that he could not have been concealed in the room, as there is no concealment possible. When, then, did he come?" Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not
present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery
of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction. Warren Buffett
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery. Jonathan Swift
"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius..." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"Is it not? Is it not? Breadth of view, my dear Mr. Mac, is one of the essentials of our profession. The interplay of ideas and the oblique uses of knowledge are often of extraordinary interest." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"Surely our profession, Mr. Mac, would be a drab and sordid one if we did not sometimes set the scene so as to glorify our results. The blunt accusation, the brutal tap upon the shoulder -- what can one make of such a denouement? But the quick inference, the subtle trap, the clever forecast of coming events, the triumphant vindication of bold theories -- are these not the pride and the justification of our life's work?" SIR Arthur Conan Doyle
Show me your's I'll show you mine. Don't know who said it.
"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"By a man's finger-nails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser knees, by the callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt cuffs -- by each of these things a man's calling is plainly revealed. That all united should fail to enlighten the competent inquirer in any case is almost inconceivable." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colorless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the
lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"From a drop of water," said the writer, "a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.
So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"My instincts are all against a woman being too frank and at her ease with me. It is no compliment to a man. Where the real sex feeling begins, timidity and distrust are its companions, heritage from old wicked days when love and violence went often hand in hand." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson, and I have a piece of work for us both tonight which, if we can bring it to a successful conclusion, will in itself justify a man's life on this planet." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"We all learn by experience, and your lesson this time is that you should never lose sight of the alternative. You were so absorbed in young Neligan that you could not spare a thought to Patrick Cairns, the true murderer of Peter Carey.` SIR Arthur Conan Doyle
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time
that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates
who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is
always followed by a dictatorship.” Alexander Tyler
"I think it's my right. This is a free market, a free country ... But traffic controlling is not my job." Shyan Din
`My dear Watson, you know how bored I have been since we locked up Colonel Carruthers. *6 My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built. Life is commonplace, the papers are sterile; a6 audacity and romance seem to have passed for ever from the criminal world. Can you ask me, then, whether I am ready to look into any new problem, however trivial it may prove? But here, unless I am mistaken, is our client.` Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“You can't
eat your cake and have it, too." Ayn Rand
"The unphilosophical majority among men are the ones most helplessly dependent on their era's dominant ideas." Leonard Peikoff
"Each man must reach his own verdict, by weighing all the relevant evidence." Leonard Peikoff
"The more you learn, if you learn it properly, the more clear you become and the more you know." Leonard Peikoff
"To save the world is the simplest thing in the world. All one has to do is think." Ayn Rand
"Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but in finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong." - Theodore
Roosevelt
"People walk in and out of our lives for different reasons and at different times, but the ones we cherish leave footprints in our hearts forever."--Unknown
"I am not an Athenian or a Greek, I am a citizen of the world." Socrates
"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil." Socrates
"Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults." Socrates
"Dignity does not come in possessing honors, but in deserving them." Aristotle
"The lhigh-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think." Aristotle
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." Aristotle
"Education is the best provision for old age." Aristotle
"Democracy leads to anarchy, which is mob rule." Plato
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." Plato
"The worst of all deceptions is self-deception." Plato
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." Plato
"No legacy is so rich as honesty."
William Shakespeare
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern. Lord Acton
No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will. Thomas Jefferson
“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that, my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.” Dr. Adrian Pierce Rogers
There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions to an individual, but permitted to a mob. Ayn Rand
"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money --- only for wanting to keep your own money." Joseph Sobran
It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong. Thomas Jefferson
"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
Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst. Thomas Paine
"In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other." Voltaire
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. H.L. Mencken
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. Thomas Jefferson