QUOTATIONS
Contents:
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
— Francis Bacon
Existence is identity, consciousness is identification.
— Leonard Peikoff, The Ominous Parallels
Order is inherent in the fact of existence. Chaos is but order we do not grasp.
— ΠΓ
The true is the whole.
— Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit
NOTE: I have not read Hegel nor am I familiar with his works. I just like this quote within my own context and interpretation.
The only true denial of the self-evident is self-annihilation.
— ΠΓ
Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Every will at variance with reason, whether right or erring, is always evil.
— St. Thomas Aquinas
Cognition is necessarily contextual and purposeful, and thus, the products of cognition must necessarily also be contextual and purposeful.
— ΠΓ
Being fallible means not that certainty is impossible, only that certainty is not automatic.
— ΠΓ, Conviction
Once reality is your antagonist, you can only lose.
— ΠΓ, Moral & Practical Efficacy
Evasion is the root of evil.
— ΠΓ, edited from Principles for Life
Rationality demands selectivity in one’s pursuits.
— ΠΓ
Rationality is the virtue of virtues; to know how to be virtuous, one must know how to think.
— ΠΓ
When men abandon reason, they find not only that their emotions cannot guide them, but that they can experience no emotions save one: terror.
— Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It
Those who decry the need for principles are ultimately helpless to the broader implications of their own decisions.
— ΠΓ, edited from Introduction to Philosophy
What is greater to me than my own life? If I choose something beyond it, I — in effect — choose nothing.
— Savitri, The Gods of Nexum
NOTE: Life is the objective source of purpose and value, which is why choosing something apart from it or “beyond it” deprives purposes and values of any objective meaning.
If I die in some pursuit, I’d die giving my life not for something beyond me but for my own life, my own life lived as a human, alive, aware and desirous to be both.
— Savitri, The Gods of Nexum
I care about those who suffer, but not at the price of my life, nor the lives of those I love, nor yet the life of anyone who cares to live.
— Savitri, edited from The Gods of Nexum
Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?
— Epicurus
NOTE: Death cannot concern the living because they are alive, and it cannot concern the dead because they are not.
To hold that there is a self beyond life is treason to your own self.
— ΠΓ, edited from The Nature of Life, Value & Morality
Values can exist only if one acts to concretise them.
— ΠΓ, edited from Moral & Practical Efficacy
There is value not in suffering but in overcoming it.
— ΠΓ, edited from Moral & Practical Efficacy
It is not suffering but the pursuit of values that betters you.
— ΠΓ, The Nature of Life, Value & Morality
Hypocrisy destroys efficacy.
— ΠΓ, edited from The Nature of Life, Value & Morality
To value life, you must value yourself. To value yourself, you must practise pride and achieve self-esteem. To practise pride and achieve self-esteem, you must know what is virtuous, you must do what is virtuous and you must know that what you do is virtuous indeed. A compromise in any part of all this destroys the rest.
— ΠΓ
God said, “Take what you want and pay for it.”
— Anonymous
I wish only for what is and can be.
— ΠΓ
Moral perfection is not about genuflecting to some deity or to pursue morality as an end in itself. It’s not about keeping a good record in some official bookkeeping. Being perfectly moral is the only path to your values and your happiness.
—Tara Smith
Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality — not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, p. 983
While moral perfection cannot coexist with moral failure, it can and does coexist with the ability for moral failure. This means, essentially, that volition is always operative in morality.
— ΠΓ, edited from Ethics
The morally perfect man does not demand of himself the impossible, but he does demand of himself every ounce of the possible.
— Leonard Peikoff, edited from Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
Self-esteem is earned, but pride is practiced.
— ΠΓ
Free will is not an exception to but an extension of causality.
— ΠΓ
Fate can destroy me, but it can never defeat me.
— Agasti
NOTE: “Defeat” in this context refers to lasting damage to one’s fundamental capacity for self-motivated, self-determined existence. “Defeat” in this context may be described as “defeat of the spirit”.
Numberless are the world’s wonders, but none more wonderful than man.
― Sophocles, Antigone