[D]eath is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.Source: Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Address, 2005/06/12
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)
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)
Human action originates change. As far as there is human action there is no stability, but ceaseless alteration. The historical process is a sequence of changes. It is beyond the power of man to stop it and to bring about an age of stability in which all history comes to a standstill. It is man's nature to strive after improvement, to beget new ideas, and to rearrange the conditions of his life according to these ideas.Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 12, Section 4, The Sphere of Economic Calculation: Stabilization, 1949
However, it is clear that if the mere fact that a man shares erroneous views and acts according to his errors qualifies him as mentally disabled, it would be very hard to discover an individual to which the epithet sane or normal could be attributed. Then we are bound to call the past generations lunatic because their ideas about the problems of the natural sciences and concomitantly their techniques differed from ours. Coming generations will call us lunatics for the same reason. Man is liable to error. If to err were the characteristic feature of mental disability, then everybody should be called mentally disabled.Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 9, Section 2, The Role of Ideas: World View and Ideology, 1949
Economics deals with real man, weak and subject to error as he is, not with ideal beings, omniscient and perfect as only gods could be.Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 4, Section 3, The Scale of Needs, 1949
If we followed a rich person around all day, we’d eventually say, no wonder he’s successful, look at EVERYTHING he does.Source: Dan Kennedy, Unsourced
After the philosophers had abandoned the search for the absolute, the utopians took it up. They weave dreams about the perfect state. They do not realize that the state, the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion, is an institution to cope with human imperfection and that its essential function is to inflict punishment upon minorities in order to protect majorities against the detrimental consequences of certain actions. With "perfect" men there would not be any need for compulsion and coercion. But utopians do not pay heed to human nature and the inalterable conditions of human life.Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 2, Section 11, The Limitations on Praxeological Concepts, 1949
One must not tell the masses: Indulge in your urge for murder; it is genuinely human and best serves your well-being. One must tell them: If you satisfy your thirst for blood, you must forego many other desires. You want to eat, to drink, to live in fine homes, to clothe yourselves, and a thousand other things which only society can provide. You cannot have everything, you must choose. The dangerous life and the frenzy of sadism may please you, but they are incompatible with the security and plenty which you do not want to miss either.Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 8, Section 8, Human Society: The Instinct of Aggression and Destruction, 1949
Society is joint action and cooperation in which each participant sees the other partner's success as a means for the attainment of his own.Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 8, Section 7, Human Society: The Great Society, 1949
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
When the rule of equality [reigns] ... no one knows where he belongs. Because he has been assured that he is "just as good as anybody else," he is likely to suspect that he is getting less than his deserts.Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948
Much of the effort of modern politicians is devoted to convincing us that men serve best when they are serving one another. But the one consideration which would make this true is left out; service to others is the best service when the effort of all is subsumed under a transcendental conception. Material gratification does not provide this, and here one has the reason why a secularized state finally breeds an intense hatred of politicians, who are trying to get men to accept one another as taskmasters. Work is not to be performed "as ever in my great Taskmaster's eye," but for my neighbor, whom I despise.Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948
The enforced irresponsibility has itself become a factor in pathology, for a burden of responsibility is, after all, the best means of getting anyone to think straight.Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948
It must be apparent that logic depends upon the dream, and not the dream upon it.Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948
An American political writer of the last century, confronted with the statement that all men are created free and equal, asked whether it would not be more accurate to say that no man was ever created free and no two men ever created equal.Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948
From a biological standpoint, human life almost reads like a poem. It has its own rhythm and beat, its internal cycles of growth and decay.Source: Lin Yutang, Unsourced
Yet, the painful lessons we would like to forget are precisely the ones which should be kept for reference. Santayana has reminded us that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, and not without reason did Plato declare that a philosopher much have a good memory.Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948
An employer was recently heard to remark that we have plenty of persons today who can tell us why a machine will not work but none will tell us why men will not work.Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948
The spoiled child is simply one who has been allowed to believe that his consumptive faculty can prescribe the order of society.Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948
