You know what you are actually in love with? Integrity. The impossible. The clean, consistent, reasonable, self-faithful, the all-of-one-style, like a work of art.
An emotion as much tells you nothing about reality, beyond the fact that something makes you feel something.
The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind.
There are two side to every issue.
An individualist is a man who says: ‘I will not run anyone’s life – nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule or be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone – nor sacrifice anyone to myself.’
Allies never trust each other, but that doesn’t spoil their effectiveness.
A reader has to be concerned only with the end result; unless he chooses to analyze it, he does not have to know by what means that result was achieved-but it is my job to know.
The best, most natural dialogue is usually written as if the writer is listening to dictation. You might get stuck on any particular point and have to question yourself; but normally, dialogue writes itself.
Even in dialogue, your own style rules your selection. Do not give yourself a blank check of this kind: ‘I’ll merely reproduce what I think a character like so-and-so would say.’ You have to reproduce it in the way your literary premises dictate.
Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims.
To demand ‘sense’ is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense.
I say that man is entitled to his own happiness and that he must achieve it himself. But that he cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy.
Do not keep silent when your own ideas and values are being attacked. If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the fault of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell.
Face a challenge and find joy in the capacity to meet it.
When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.
Morally, the promise of an impossible “right” to economic security is an infamous attempt to abrogate the concept of rights. It can and does mean only one thing: a promise to enslave the men who produce, for the benefit of those who don’t.
To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.
Don’t consider our interests or desires. You have no duty to anyone but yourself.
A rational man knows-or makes it a point to discover-the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come.
Your soul has a single basic function-the act of valuing.