Alisa's Eyes

2010-12-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

“One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.”

2010-12-01T18:08:00.000-08:00

"Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims."

2010-11-21T02:17:00.000-08:00

"It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master."

2010-11-15T09:55:00.000-08:00

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."

2010-11-10T13:38:00.001-08:00

The source of the government's authority is "the consent of the governed." This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose.

2010-09-19T03:05:00.000-07:00

"The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap."

2010-09-16T02:19:00.000-07:00

"So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?"

2010-09-04T18:08:00.000-07:00

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter."

2010-08-28T01:20:00.000-07:00

"People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk."

2010-08-16T02:01:00.000-07:00

"Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver."

2010-08-12T18:13:00.000-07:00

"In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst."

2010-08-04T07:02:00.000-07:00

The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.

2010-07-30T14:39:00.000-07:00

"Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think."

2010-07-13T08:11:00.000-07:00

"To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power."

2010-07-01T05:35:00.000-07:00

Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics - a rational ethics - as a precondition of rebirth.

2010-06-24T05:33:00.000-07:00

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.

2010-06-16T15:53:00.001-07:00

In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst.

2010-06-06T21:07:00.000-07:00

All work is an act of philosophy.

2010-05-30T10:51:00.000-07:00

Why ask useless questions? How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky? Who is John Galt?

2010-05-22T08:04:00.000-07:00

If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose- because it contains all the others- the fact that they were the people who created the phrase "to make money". No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity- to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.

2010-05-14T19:52:00.000-07:00

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

2010-05-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

“If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?”

" To Shrug."

2010-04-20T13:49:00.000-07:00

The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.

2010-04-16T13:44:00.000-07:00

"I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence."

2010-03-18T10:44:00.001-07:00

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.”

2010-01-18T12:20:00.000-08:00

"The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see."

2009-12-28T11:17:00.001-08:00

"Government 'help' to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off."

2009-12-13T11:21:00.001-08:00

“There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob”

2009-12-09T17:54:00.001-08:00

2009-12-08T21:15:00.001-08:00

"Reason, the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by the senses, is man's basic tool of survival."

2009-11-30T04:58:00.001-08:00

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter."

2009-11-25T02:38:00.000-08:00

"People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk."

2009-11-11T06:44:00.000-08:00

"Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property."

2009-11-06T17:15:00.000-08:00

"The socialists have a certain kind of logic on their side: if the collective sacrifice of all to all is the moral ideal, then they wanted to establish this idea in practice, here and on this earth. The arguments that socialism could not and would not work, did not stop them: neither has altruism ever worked, but this has not caused men to stop and question it. Only reason can ask such questions - and reason, they were told on all sides, has nothing to do with morality, morality lies outside the realm of reason, no rational morality can ever be defined."

2009-10-29T19:23:00.001-07:00

"Capitalism demands the best of every man – his rationality – and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him."

2009-10-23T09:14:00.001-07:00

"The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence."

2009-10-16T16:18:00.000-07:00

"The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles."

2009-10-13T07:10:00.001-07:00

A reprint: In honor of the Nobel Committee

2009-10-09T08:48:00.000-07:00

For Mr. Obama & those with whom he has found it so fashionable to agree:

"Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taughts that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone."

Perhaps it just feels more cozy to 'stand together' than, by showing courage, to have to stand alone.

2009-10-06T05:37:00.001-07:00

2009-09-25T14:22:00.001-07:00

"The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."

2009-09-20T16:09:00.000-07:00

"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."

2009-09-19T05:34:00.000-07:00

"Who is John Galt?"

2009-09-17T12:12:00.000-07:00

"If men want to oppose war, it is 'statism' that they must oppose."

2009-09-15T00:02:00.000-07:00

"There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist."

2009-09-13T06:07:00.000-07:00

"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplacable spark. In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to reach. The world you deisre can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours."

2009-09-12T17:04:00.000-07:00

"Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taughts that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone."

2009-09-09T14:09:00.000-07:00

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."

2009-09-06T01:56:00.000-07:00

"I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction."

2009-09-04T07:25:00.000-07:00

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?..."

2009-09-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

"Who is John Galt?"