Under a morality of sacrifice, the first value you sacrifice is morality; the next is self-esteem. When need is the standard, every man is both victim and parasite. As a victim, he must labor to fill the needs of others, leaving himself in the position of a parasite whose needs must be filled by others. He cannot approach his fellow men except in one of two disgraceful roles: he is both a beggar and a sucker.John Galt (Fictional Character)
Such is the secret core of your creed, the other half of your double standard: it is immoral to live by your own effort, but moral to live by the effort of others - it is immoral to consume your own product, but moral to consume the products of others - it is immoral to earn, but moral to mooch - it is the parasites who are the moral justification for the existence of the producers, but the existence of the parasites is an end in itself - it is evil to profit by achievement, but good to profit by sacrifice - it is evil to create your own happiness, but good to enjoy it at the price of the blood of others.John Galt (Fictional Character)
Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate-do you hear me? no man may start-the use of physical force against other.John Galt (Fictional Character)
Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action.John Galt (Fictional Character)
When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer.Hank Rearden (Fictional Character)
Second, the reciprocal performances of the parties must in some sense be equal in value…. We cannot here speak of an exact identity, for it makes no sense at all to exchange, say, a book or idea in return for exactly the same book or idea. The bond of reciprocity unites men, not simply in spite of their differences but because of their differences….Source: Lon L. Fuller, The Morality of Law, pp. 23–24, 1964
In 1969 Robert McNamara, then president of the World Bank, said he was reluctant to finance health care "unless it was very strictly related to population control, because usually health facilities contributed to the decline of the death rate, and thereby to the population explosion."
I can just see, having done arbitration in the industrial scene, that the employers will love this generation, that they are not going to press very many grievances, there won't be much trouble, they are going to do their jobs, they are going to be easy to handle. There aren't going to be riots. There aren't going to be revolutions. There aren't going to be many strikes.Source: Clark Kerr, Spotlight on the college student, 1959
"[W]hen you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you. . . you may know that your society is doomed."
Source: "During Wartime" Prayer, "My Prayer Book" Concordia Publishing House 1957Lord Jesus Christ, Thou Prince of Peace, who hatest wars, in which men slay their own brothers and destroy those things which Thou hast given us to enjoy, forgive us for wars and fightings among us and for the lust of our flesh that begets them.
O Thou who makest wars to cease unto the ends of the earth, bring a speedy end to this reign of destruction and terror. Restore men to sanity so that they may see the insanity of war and avoid it as a sore plague of mankind and an offense to Thy holy majesty.
May your Lordship not torment yourself: there is a remedy for this deluge of crimes. Let us be, you and me, that which we should be. There will be two less souls to convert. Let each person behave thus: it is the most efficacious of reforms. The trouble is, that no one wants to correct himself and everyone meddles at correcting others: thus everything stays as is.Source: Unsourced
... it is only in self-improvement that one can have any influence whatsoever on the improvement of others. This point may never come clear unless we know why so few of us feel any need for self-improvement while so many of us possess an overpowering itch to improve others. Why do we spend so much more time looking down than up?Source: Leonard Read, How to Advance Liberty, March 10, 1965
And so I hold it is not treasonSource: Unknown, Earliest reference is The Rotarian, Nov 1925
To advance a simple reason
For the sorry lack of progress we decry.
It is this: Instead of working
On himself, each man is shirking
And trying to reform some other guy.
Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by producing.
Those who are unaware they are walking in darkness will never seek the light.Source: Bruce Lee (Unsourced)
As the world population soared, the population controllers came to believe they were fighting a war, and there would be collateral damage. Millions of intra-uterine contraceptive devices were exported to poor countries although they were known to cause infections and sterility. "Perhaps the individual patient is expendable in the general scheme of things," said a participant at a conference on the devices organised in 1962 by the Population Council, a research institute founded by John D. Rockefeller, "particularly if the infection she acquires is sterilising but not lethal." [Emphasis and spelling in original article]Source: Review, Horrid History. The Economist: May 24, 2008
Inflation did not conjure up Hitler, any more than he, as it happened, conjured it. But it made Hitler possible.Source: When Money Dies, Adam Fergusson 1975
... in our system of profit and loss, we cannot possibly think that the government should bail the banks out of bad loans they made, but allow them to keep the profits on the good ones.Source: Milton Friedman (Unsourced)
