Your self is your mind; renounce it and you become a chunk of meat ready for any cannibal to swallow.
We do not think of them as Liberty 5-3000 any longer. We have given them a name in our thoughts. We call them the Golden One. But it is a sin to give men names which distinguish them from other men. Yet we call them the Golden One, for they are not like the others. The Golden One are not like the others.
We’ve heard so much about strikes,” he said, “and about the dependence of the uncommon man upon the common. We’ve heard it shouted that the industrialist is a parasite, that his workers support him, create his wealth, make his luxury possible – and what would happen to him if they walked out? Very well. I propose to show to the world who depends on whom, who supports whom, who is the source of wealth, who makes whose livelihood possible and what happens to whom when who walks out.
My way of trading is to know that the joy you give me is paid for by the joy you get from me – not by your suffering or mine. I don’t accept sacrifices and I don’t make them. If you asked me for more than you meant to me, I would refuse. If you asked me to give up the railroad, I’d leave you. If ever the pleasure of one has to be bought by the pain of the other, there better be no trade at all. A trade by which one gains and the other loses is a fraud.
Both of them smiled derisively. But Francisco seemed to laugh at things because he saw something much greater. Jim laughed as if he wanted to let nothing remain great.
He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival, the cats who teach their kittens to hunt, the birds who spend such strident effort on teaching their fledglings to fly – yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child’s education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think.
At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains.
We were guilty of the great transgression of preference!
We are one of the Damned.
He wondered why he stood here, he wondered who had the right to demand that he waste a single irreplaceable hour of his life.
To love a man for his virtues is paltry and human, it tells you; to love him for his flaws is divine. To love those who are worthy of it is self-interest; to love the unworthy is sacrifice. You owe your love to those who don’t deserve it, and the less they deserve it, the more love you owe them – the more loathsome the object, the nobler your love – the more unfastidious your love, the greater the virtue.
He shared her conversations, he laughed with her friends, he was suddenly the devoted, attentive, admiring husband.
In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival – so that for you, who are a human being, the question ‘to be or not to be’ is the question ‘to think or not to think.’ “A.
The process of observing the facts of reality and of integrating them into concepts is, in essence, a process of induction. The process of subsuming new instances under a known concept is, in essence, a process of deduction.
It is worth noting, at this point, that what the enemies of reason seem to know, but its alleged defenders have not discovered, is the fact that axiomatic concepts are the guardians of man’s mind and the foundation of reason – the key-stone, touchstone and hallmark of reason – and if reason is to be destroyed, it is axiomatic concepts that have to be destroyed.
Do not, however, make the error of reversing cause and effect: the good of the country was made possible precisely by the fact that it was not forced on anyone as a moral goal or duty; it was merely an effect; the cause was a man’s right to pursue his own good. It is this right – not its consequences – that represents the moral justification of capitalism.
By special permit, exceptions were granted – on the grounds of “essential need” – to a few of the larger business enterprises and the more fashionable hotels.
Yet no penny of his wealth had been obtained by force or fraud; he was guilty of nothing, except that he earned his own fortune and never forgot that it was his.
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 others.
Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best.