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*[T]he crown at the Olympic
Games is not awarded to the most beautiful and the strongest but to the
participants in the contests.
(hôsper d' Olumpiasin ouch hoi kallistoi kai ischurotatoi stephanountai all')
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-Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics, 350BC
1099a 5
Martin Ostwald, trans., 1962
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*Actions which conform to
virtue are naturally pleasant.
(toiautai d' hai kat' aretên praxeis, hôste kai toutois eisin hêdeiai)
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-Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics, 350BC
1099a 14
Martin Ostwald, trans., 1962
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*And those who act under
compulsion and unwillingly act with pain, but those who do acts for their
pleasantness and nobility do them with pleasure.
(. . .kai hoi men biai kai akontes lupêrôs, hoi de dia to hêdu kai kalon
meth'
hêdonês. . .)
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-Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics, 350 BC
1110b 12
W.D. Ross, trans.
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*Know ye not that they which
run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may
obtain.
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-I Corinthians 9:24
KJV
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The only thing necessary for the triumph of
evil is for good men to do nothing.
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-Edmund Burke
Letter to William Smith, 1795
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There is a dilemma to which every opposition
to successful iniquity must, in the nature of things, be liable. If you lie
still, you are considered as an accomplice in the measures in which you
silently acquiesce. If you resist, you are accused of provoking irritable
power to new excesses. The conduct of a losing party never appears right.
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-Edmund Burke
A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly
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Thought is action in rehearsal.
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-Sigmund Freud
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~To be mistaken is a
misfortune to be pitied; but to know the truth and not to conform one's
actions to it is a crime which Heaven and Earth condemn.
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-Giuseppe Mazzini
The Duties of Man and Other Essays, 1910
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*Well, if a man don't
have a chance, then he has to take a chance!
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-Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon , 1977
Pt. I, Ch. 8
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*I am having a grand time
here [in Ridgefield, Conn., visiting Isabel Paterson]. . .I'm turning into a
humanitarian and loving the world. That's a natural result of doing nothing
but loafing.
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-Ayn Rand
Private correspondence to Archibald Ogden (her editor for The
Fountainhead, and later friend), May 6, 1943
Letters of Ayn Rand, 1995
Chapter 2, "We The Living to The Fountainhead (1937-1943)"
Michael S. Berliner, ed.
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*An opinion is only important
when expressed in action.
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-Ayn Rand
Private correspondence to Alan Collins (her literary agent at Curtis Brown,
Ltd.), June 24,1946
Letters of Ayn Rand, 1995
Chapter 6, "The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Years (1945-1959)"
Michael S. Berliner, ed.
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*Human actions proceed from
intellectual premises, accepted consciously as convictions or on faith, as
axioms.
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-Ayn Rand
Private correspondence to Rose Wilder Lane (pro-individualist writer and
daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder), November 3,1946
Letters of Ayn Rand, 1995
Chapter 6, "The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Years (1945-1959)"
Michael S. Berliner, ed.
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*[A]n idea unexpressed in
physical action is a contemptible hypocrisy.
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-Francisco D'Anconia, a hero in Ayn Rand's
Atlas Shrugged , 1957
Pt. Two, "Either-Or", Ch. IV, "The Sanction of the Victim"
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~Do, or do not. There is no
'try.'
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-The character Yoda in George Lucas'
"The Empire Strikes Back"
"Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back", 1980
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