Thursday, August 13, 2020
Objectivism in Ten Quotes
Monday, August 10, 2020
Top Ten Famous People Quotes
These are my 10 favorite quotes by random famous people:
1. "Always do right. This will please some people, and astonish the rest." - Mark Twain.
2. "Lack of money is the root of all evil." - Mark Twain.
3. "Suppose you were a member of Congress. And suppose you were an idiot. But I repeat myself." - Mark Twain.
4. "The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated." - Mark Twain.
5. "Learn like you'll live forever, live like you'll die tomorrow." - Mohatma Ghandi.
6. "Good artists copy. Great artists steal." - Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, himself quoting Pablo Picasso, while discussing the Mac Operating System.
7. "Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken." - Oscar Wilde.
8. "It's a republic, if you can keep it." - Benjamin Franklin, when asked what form of government the Constitutional Convention had chosen for the USA.
9. "You are never alone, when alone." - Cicero.
10. "I'm gay, and that's a good thing." - quote attributed to the first openly gay Mayor of Berlin, Germany.
Sunday, August 9, 2020
Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche - The Top Ten Quotes
These are the top ten (my ten favorite) quotes said by philosophers Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche:
1. "How can you return to me if you do not leave me?" - Nietzsche
2. "Build it as a monument to that spirit which is yours . . . and could have been mine." - Rand
3. "Sometimes, when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you." - Nietzsche
4. "Insist on it." - Rand
5. "God is dead, and we are the ones who killed Him." - Nietzsche
6. "Are you happy, Mr. Superman?" - Rand (Yes, this is Rand, not Nietzsche - she is referring to him. It's one of my favorite lines from The Fountainhead.)
7. "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." - Rand
8. "A philosopher must always be forgiven for his first followers." - Nietzsche
9. "It's the soul, Peter, the soul, not whips or swords or fire or guns." - Rand
10. "He didn't want to make money, only to get it." - Rand
The Top Ten Virtues from The John Galt Speech in Atlas Shrugged
I have not seen a simple list of the virtues enumerated in Atlas Shrugged, so I made this list:
1. Reason
2. Purpose
3. Self-Esteem
4. Rationality
5. Independence
6. Integrity
7. Honesty
8. Justice
9. Productiveness
10. Pride
For Ayn Rand's explication of these virtues, see pages 932-33, Atlas Shrugged, Signet Paperback Edition.
One can further subdivide this list: Reason, Purpose and Self-Esteem are "the Big Three Virtues," Rationality, Independence and Integrity are "The Intellectual Virtues," and Honesty, Justice, Productiveness and Pride are "The Social Virtues." These three sets of values comprise the bedrock foundation of Objectivist morality.