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2019 December 06
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"Absolute liberty is absence of restraint;
responsibility is restraint; therefore,
the ideally free individual is responsible to himself." |
"The less government we have the better --
the fewer laws and the less confided power.
The antidote to this abuse of formal government
is the influence of private character,
the growth of the individual." |
"The fact that most people think that being selfish means harming one's fellow man, that pursuing one's own self-interest equates to behaving brutally or irrationally, is, as Ms. Rand noted, a 'psychological confession' on their part. In fact it is against one's own long-term self-interest to behave irrationally or trample others. Such actions are the exact opposite of selfish -- they're self-destructive." |
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2019 December 05
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"A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule." |
"The antipode of individualism is collectivism, which subordinates the individual to the group -- be it the 'community,' the tribe, the race, the proletariat, etc. A person's moral worth is judged by how much he sacrifices himself to the group. [Under collectivism] the more emergencies (and victims) the better, because they provide more opportunity for 'virtue'." |
"Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all." |
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2019 December 04
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"Individuality is to be
preserved and respected everywhere,
as the root of everything good." |
"Who is the fascist? Individualism and the political philosophy of limited government is not only inconsistent with but is the exact opposite of fascism and Nazism. Under fascism and Nazism, the state reigns supreme with absolute power over everyone and all forms of property. It can well be asked: who is the fascist, when the president of the United States and many Democrats and Republicans in congress call for expanded authority for the FBI and other federal security agencies to intrude into the lives of the American citizenry? Who is the fascist, when the call is made for increased power for the FBI to undertake “roving wiretapping” or have easier access to the telephone and credit-card records of the general population? Who is the fascist, when the proposal is made to make it easier for the FBI to investigate and infiltrate any political organization or association because the government views it as a potential terrorist danger?" |
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2019 December 03
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"The state represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence." |
"The object and practice of liberty
lies in the limitation of government power." |
"Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men." |
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2019 December 02
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"The First Amendment says nothing about a right not to be offended.
The risk of finding someone else's speech offensive
is the price each of us pays for our own free speech.
Free people don't run to court -- or to the principal --
when they encounter a message they don't like.
They answer it with one of their own." |
"All men have equal rights, but not to equal things." |
"With respect to the words general welfare,
I have always regarded them as qualified
by the detail of powers connected with them.
To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be
a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which
there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." |
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