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 | "He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost
fascinating." | |
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Found in the topic Face.
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| "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 neighbours ? 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." | |
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Found in the topic Unsorted.
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| "So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate the use
of physical force against others.... When a man attempts to deal with me
by force, I answer him by force. It is only as retaliation that force may
be used and only against the man who starts its use. No, I do not share
his evil or sink to his concept of morality: I merely grant him his
choice, destruction, the only destruction he had the right to choose: his
own." | |
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Found in the topic Force.
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| "Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your
life, and that happiness ?not pain or mindless self-indulgence ? is the
proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of
your loyalty to the achievement of your values." | |
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Found in the topic Happiness.
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| "The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt." | |
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Found in the topic Guilt.
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| "All your life, you have heard yourself denounced; not for your
faults, but for your greatest virtues. You have been hated, not for your
mistakes, but for your achievements. You have been scorned for all those
qualities of character which are your highest " | |
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Found in the topic Character.
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| "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." | |
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Found in the topic Self.
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| "Since a rational man"s ambition is unlimited, since his pursuit and
achievement of values is a lifelong process ? and the higher the values,
the harder the struggle ? he needs a moment, an hour or some period of
time in which he can experience the sense of his completed task, the sense
of living in a universe where his values have been successfully achieved.
It is like a moment of rest, a moment to gain fuel to move farther." | |
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Found in the topic Man.
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| "What did they seek from him? What were they after? He had never
asked anything of them; it was they who wished to hold him, they who
pressed a claim on him - and they seemed to have the form of affection,
but it was a form which he found harder to endure than any sort of hatred.
He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth. They
professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the
things for which he could wish to be loved. He wondered what response they
could hope to obtain from him in such manner - if his response was what
they wanted. And it was, he thought; else why those constant complaints,
those unceasing accusations about his indifference? Why that chronic air
of suspicion, as if they were waiting to be hurt? He had never had a
desire to hurt them, but he had always felt their defensive, reproachful
expectation; they seemed wounded by anything he said, it was not a matter
of his words or actions, it was almost . . . almost as if they were
wounded by the mere fact of his being. Don"t start imagining the insane -
he told himself severely, struggling to face the riddle with the strictest
of his ruthless sense of justice. He could not condemn them without
understanding; and he could not understand." | |
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Found in the topic Insanity.
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| "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." | |
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Found in the topic Civilization.
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| "Just as I support my life, neither by robbery nor alms, but by my
own effort, so I do not seek to derive my happiness from the injury or the
favour others of, but earn it by my own achievement. Just as I do not
consider the pleasure of others as the goal of my life, so I do not
consider my pleasure as the goal of the lives of others. Just as there are
no contradictions in my values and no conflicts among my desires ? so there
are no victims and no conflicts of interest among rational men, men who do
not desire the unearned and do not view one another with a cannibal"s
lust, men who neither make sacrifice nor accept them." | |
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Found in the topic Others.
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| "I don"t know. But I"ve watched them here for twenty years and I"ve
seen the change. They used to rush through here, and it was wonderful to
watch, it was the hurry of men who knew where they were going and were
eager to get there. Now they"re hurrying because they are afraid. It"s not
a purpose that drives them, it"s fear. They"re not going anywhere, they"re
escaping. And I don"t think they know what it is that they want to escape.
They don"t look at one another. They jerk when brushed against. They smile
too much, but it"s an ugly kind of smiling: it"s not joy, it"s pleading. I
don"t know what it is that"s happening to the world." | |
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Found in the topic Apathy.
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| "The adversary she found herself forced to fight was not worth
matching or beating; it was not a superior ability which she would have
found honour in challenging; it was ineptitude ? a grey spread of cotton
that seemed soft and shapeless, that could offer no resistance to anything
or anybody, yet managed to be a barrier in her way. She stood, disarmed,
before the riddle of what made this possible, she could find no
answer." | |
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Found in the topic Fight.
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| "An honest man is one who knows that he can"t consume more than he
has produced." | |
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Found in the topic Potential.
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| "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." | |
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Found in the topic Life.
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| "The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently;
they are most helplessly in its power." | |
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Found in the topic Philosophy.
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| "Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an
altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage
perpetrated by disciples of altruism." | |
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Found in the topic Selfishness.
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| "Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to
choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice. If he abdicates
his power, he abdicates the status of man, and the grinding chaos of the
irrational is what he achieves as his sphere of existence ? by his own
choice." | |
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Found in the topic Religion.
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| "But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the
weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or
muscles. Wealth is the product of man"s capacity to think. Then is money
made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not
invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools?
By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the
expense of the lazy? Money is made ? before it can be looted or mooched ?
made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability.
An honest man is one who knows that he can"t consume more than he has
produced." | |
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Found in the topic Money.
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| "Wealth is the product of man"s capacity to think." | |
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Found in the topic Products.
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