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*It is vain to talk of
the interest of the community, without understanding what is the interest
of the individual.
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-Jeremy Bentham
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals
and Legislation, 1789
Chapter I, "Of the Principle of Utility", 5
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*The community is a
fictitious body, composed of the individual persons who are
considered as constituting as it were its members. The interest
of the community then is, what?---the sum of the interests of the several
members who compose it.
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-Jeremy Bentham
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals
and Legislation, 1789
Chapter I, "Of the Principle of Utility", 4
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How I wish that somewhere there existed
an island for those who are wise and of good will.
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-Albert Einstein
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*We seem, at times, to
not know what we are doing, and yet we are doing a great deal, and we're
doing it at breakneck speed.
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-Steve Hagen
How The World Can Be The Way It Is: An
Inquiry for the New Millenium into Science, Philosophy, and Perception,
1995
Introduction, "The Problem"
(cf. AMERICA/AMERICANS: Peter)
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The discussions of every age are filled with
the issues on which its leading schools of thought differ. But the general
intellectual atmosphere of the time is always determined by the views on
which the opposing schools agree. They become the unspoken presuppositions
of all thought, and common and unquestioningly accepted foundations on
which all discussion proceeds.
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-F.A. Hayek
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We have the power to make this the best
generation of mankind in the history of the world--or to make it the last.
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-John Fitzgerald Kennedy
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Whoever desired to found a state and give it
laws must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to
display their vicious nature.
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-Niccolo Macchiavelli
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~Great minds discuss
ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.
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-Laurence J. Peter
Peter's Quotations: Ideas For Our Time,
1977
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A sociologist is a scientist who blames
crime on everything and everyone, except the person who commits it.
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-Laurence J. Peter
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A society grows great when old men plant
trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
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-Greek proverb
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*When facing society, the
man most concerned, the man who is to do the most and contribute the most,
has the least to say. It's taken for granted that he has no voice and the
reasons he could offer are rejected in advance as prejudiced-since no
speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to
pass judgement on a man than an idea. Though how in hell one passes
judgement on a man without considering the content of his brain is more
than I'll ever understand.
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-Kent Lansing, a character in Ayn Rand's
The Fountainhead, 1943
Part Two, "Ellsworth M. Toohey", Ch. 10
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*If we have a society
where everyone sacrifices---just exactly who profits and who is happy?
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-Ayn Rand
Private correspondence to John Temple Graves (newspaper columnist), August
12, 1936
Letters of Ayn Rand, 1995
Chapter 1, "Arrival in America to We the Living (1926-1937)"
Michael S. Berliner, ed.
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*You cannot claim that
you have a healthy forest composed of rotting trees.
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-Ayn Rand
Private correspondence to John Temple Graves (newspaper columnist), August
12, 1936
Letters of Ayn Rand, 1995
Chapter 1, "Arrival in America to We the Living (1926-1937)"
Michael S. Berliner, ed.
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*There is only one great
debt that men owe to others---and it's not a material one (though its
results are material). The only real benefit we receive from others is
the benefit of the accumulated thinking of the men who preceded us, or of
our own contemporaries who have superior intelligence. If I were born
alone on a desert island, I could work as hard as I do now, with the same
ability---and I would not achieve a material return equivalent to the one
I get now. It is the accumulated thought, knowledge and discoveries of
the past that make my efforts produce more (materially) than if I were
starting alone from scratch and had to spend my life inventing the wheel
(if I were even able to invent it). The fact that billions of human beings
are working at something and producing something around me does not actually
add to my material welfare. What they produce, they keep to themselves---
or, to be exact, they keep its material equivalent, in the process of
exchange. The something extra I get from men, the thing that raises the
material efficiency of my own efforts is not the anonymous hordes of the
"common man." It's the thinking, the ingenuity of the exceptional men who
discovered and showed me better ways of doing things, which I would not have
discovered by myself. The great advantages of an exchange society---of a
division of labor and specialization---were made possible only by these
thinkers and discoverers. Now the degree to which I profit from this
accumulated intelligence depends upon my own intelligence, upon my ability
to understand great thinking, to grasp it and apply it. If my ability is
great---then to carry it forward. If my ability is of the lowest order---
then I still get a benefit from the intelligence around me, only in this
case almost totally undeserved, completely "extra."
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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] stranger's face is
an unapproached potentiality, to be opened if one makes the choice and
effort.
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-Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead, 1943
Part Four : Howard Roark, Ch. 19
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*'I've seen the change.
They used to rush through here, and it was wonderful to watch, it was the
hurry of men who knew where they were going and were eager to get there.
Now they're hurrying because they're afraid. It's not a purpose that
drives them, it's fear. They're not going anywhere, they're escaping.
And I don't think that they know what it is that they want to escape.
They don't look at one another. They jerk when brushed against. They
smile too much, but it's an ugly kind of smiling: it's not joy, it's
pleading. I don't know what it is that's happening to the world.' He
shrugged. 'Oh, well, who is John Galt?'
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-The newsstand owner, a character in Ayn Rand's
Atlas Shrugged, 1957
Part One : Non-Contradiction, Ch. III, "The Top and the Bottom"
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. . . those who produce the things we all
live on are supposed to 'give something back' to those who produce
nothing.
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-Thomas Sowell
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Millions must plough and forge and dig in
order that a few thousand may write and paint and study.
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-von Treitschke
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