"Have confidence in your own judgment; don't give undue deference to the opinions and feelings of others." - Ayn Rand

Hi Alma! Have a marvelous week.

I agree with Ayn Rand. When I read a book, I just can't stop hoping that the things that I like in the story are real. And yes, inspirations should be anchored on something solid that can be concretized.

"All writers have to rely on inspiration. But you have to know where it comes from, why it happens, and how to make it happen to you."

- Ayn Rand

"I read a novel for the purpose of seeing the kind of people I would want to see in real life and living through the kind of experience I would want to live through."

- Ayn Rand

Ilyn wrote: "Dagny is the heroine in Atlas Shrugged. She considers Lawson's statement as the most despicable a man can make."


LOL! I would tend to agree! ;-)

Steve

Dagny is the heroine in Atlas Shrugged. She considers Lawson's statement as the most despicable a man can make.

Prasad wrote: "Atlas shrugged:

Eugene Lawson: I can proudly say that in all of my life, I have never made a profit.
Dagny Taggart: Mr.Lawson, I think I should let you know that of all the statements a man can..."

"Proudly".....?

Am I missing something?

Stephen H. Turner
The Last Voyage of the Cassiopeia
Almagest The Adventures of MarsShield
3700
The Avedon Question

Hello Prasad. Thank you.

Atlas shrugged:

Eugene Lawson: I can proudly say that in all of my life, I have never made a profit.
Dagny Taggart: Mr.Lawson, I think I should let you know that of all the statements a man can make, that is the one I consider most despicable.

Honor is self-esteem made visible in action - Ayn Rand.

Hello Gina. Thanks for joining us. Happy New Year.

"The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.

What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey?

But I am done with this creed of corruption.

I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame.

And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride.

This god, this one word:

"I."

— Ayn Rand (Anthem)

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. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of the freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled.

But then he gave up all he had won, and fell lower than his savage beginning.

What brought it to pass? What disaster took their reason away from men? What whip lashed them to their knees in shame and submission? The worship of the word "We."

-Anthem

"And as we all undress at night, in the dim light of the candles, our brothers are silent, for they dare not speak the thoughts of their minds. For all must agree with all, and they cannot know if their thoughts are the thoughts of all, and so they fear to speak."

-Anthem

" Strange are the ways of evil. We are false in the faces of our brothers. We are defying the will of our Councils. We alone, of the thousands who walk this earth, we alone in this hour are doing a work which has no purpose save that we wish to do it. The evil of our crime is not for the human mind to probe. The nature of our punishment, if it be discovered, is not for the human heart to ponder. Never, not in the memory of the Ancient Ones' Ancients, never have men done that which we are doing.

And yet there is no shame in us and no regret. We say to ourselves that we are a wretch and a traitor. But we feel no burden upon our spirit and no fear in our heart. And it seems to us that our spirit is clear as a lake troubled by no eyes save those of the sun. And in our heart --strange are the ways of evil!-- in our heart there is the first peace we have known in twenty years."

-Anthem (This one was a little further along in the book when the protagonist finally succumbs to this desire to learn.)

"We preferred some work and some lessons to the others. We did not listen well to the history of all the Councils elected since the Great Rebirth. But we loved the Science of Things. We wished to know. We wished to know about all the things which make the earth around us. We asked so many questions that the Teachers forbade it"

-Anthem

I will ask you to project the look on a child’s face when he grasps the answer to some problem he has been striving to understand. It is a radiant look of joy, of liberation, almost of triumph, which is unself-conscious, yet self-assertive, and its radiance seems to spread in two directions: outward, as an illumination of the world—inward, as the first spark of what is to become the fire of an earned pride. If you have seen this look, or experienced it, you know that if there is such a concept as “sacred”—meaning: the best, the highest possible to man—this look is the sacred, the not-to-be-betrayed, the not-to-be-sacrificed for anything or anyone.

- “Requiem for Man,” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 303

Individual rights is the only proper principle of human coexistence, because it rests on man’s nature, i.e., the nature and requirements of a conceptual consciousness. Man gains enormous values from dealing with other men; living in a human society is his proper way of life — but only on certain conditions. Man is not a lone wolf and he is not a social animal. He is a contractual animal. He has to plan his life long-range, make his own choices, and deal with other men by voluntary agreement (and he has to be able to rely on their observance of the agreements they entered).

- “A Nation’s Unity,” The Ayn Rand Letter, II, 2, 3

Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by producing.

~Ayn Rand

Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday. In spite of its religious form (giving thanks to God for a good harvest), its essential, secular meaning is a celebration of successful production. It is a producers’ holiday. The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production. Abundance is (or was and ought to be) America’s pride—just as it is the pride of American parents that their children need never know starvation.

- “Cashing in on Hunger,” The Ayn Rand Letter, III, 23, 1.

Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts teaches, in effect, that “A word is worth a thousand pictures.”

- Objectivism: The philosophy of Ayn Rand (by Leonard Peikoff)

Constitution

Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals—that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government—that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens’ protection against the government.

- “The Nature of Government,” The Virtue of Selfishness, 114.

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Ours was the first government based on and strictly limited by a written document—the Constitution—which specifically forbids it to violate individual rights or to act on whim. The history of the atrocities perpetrated by all the other kinds of governments—unrestricted governments acting on unprovable assumptions—demonstrates the value and validity of the original political theory on which this country was built.

- “Censorship: Local and Express,” Philosophy: Who Needs It, 181

Economic Power vs. Political Power

A disastrous intellectual package-deal, put over on us by the theoreticians of statism, is the equation of economic power with political power. You have heard it expressed in such bromides as: “A hungry man is not free,” or “It makes no difference to a worker whether he takes orders from a businessman or from a bureaucrat.” Most people accept these equivocations—and yet they know that the poorest laborer in America is freer and more secure than the richest commissar in Soviet Russia. What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus physical coercion or compulsion.

The difference between political power and any other kind of social “power,” between a government and any private organization, is the fact that a government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.

- “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business,”
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 46.

There is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights.” No human rights can exist without property rights. Since material goods are produced by the mind and effort of individual men, and are needed to sustain their lives, if the producer does not own the result of his effort, he does not own his life. To deny property rights means to turn men into property owned by the state. Whoever claims the “right” to “redistribute” the wealth produced by others is claiming the “right” to treat human beings as chattel.

- “The Monument Builders,” The Virtue of Selfishness, 91.

Hello Ben. Welcome to the group. Thank you for joining us.

Woman/Man, as a measure of all things!

Man is not a lone wolf and he is not a social animal. He is a contractual animal. He has to plan his life rong-range; make his own choices, and deal with other men by voluntary agreement.

- The Ayn Rand Letter

The mark of an honest man . . . is that he means what he says and knows what he means.

- “Textbook of Americanism,” The Ayn Rand Column

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Intellectual honesty consists in taking ideas seriously. To take ideas seriously means that you intend to live by, to practice, any idea you accept as true.

- “Philosophical Detection,” Philosophy: Who Needs It

Ideas are the greatest and most practical power on Earth.

- Ayn Rand

From: the Introduction to Night of January 16th by Ayn Rand

“… This was my first (but not last) encounter with the literary manifestation of the mind-body dichotomy that dominates today’s culture: the split between the “serious” and the “entertaining” – the belief that if a literary work is “serious”, it must bore people to death; and if it is “entertaining”, it must not communicate anything of importance. Which means that “the good” has to be painful, and that pleasure has to be mindlessly low-grade.”

If men hold a rational philosophy, including the conviction that they possess volition, the image of a hero guides and inspires them. If men hold an irrational philosophy, including the conviction that they are helpless automatons, the image of a monster serves to reassure them; they feel in effect: “I am not that bad.”

The philosophical meaning or the vested interest of presenting man as a loathsome monstrosity is the hope and the demand for a moral blank check.

- The Romantic manifesto by Ayn Rand (page 126)

To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason, Purpose, Self-esteem.

Reason, as his only tool of knowledge -

Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve -

Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living.

- Atlas Shrugged

"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."

-- Francisco d'Anconia (Atlas Shrugged, p. 199)

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I copied this from Bill M's profile.

The Ayn Rand Lexicon - Objectivism from A to Z:

http://www.aynrandlexicon.com

Man’s Rights by Ayn Rand
from Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal


http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?p...

"No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy."

- John Galt, Atlas Shrugged

Moral cowardice is fear of upholding the good because it is good, and fear of opposing evil because it is evil.

- Altruism as Appeasement, The Voice of Reason

The Voice of Reason (The Ayn Rand Library)

Ayn Rand on:

Objectivism: “A book salesman asked me whether I could present the essence of my philosophy while standing on one foot. I did, as follows:

1. Metaphysics.... Objective Reality
2. Epistemology.. Reason
3. Ethics............. Self-interest
4. Politics........... Capitalism"

[Ilyn Ross:

5. Aesthetics........ Romanticism]

She then translated those terms into familiar language:

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
"You can't eat your cake and have it, too."
"Man is an end in himself."
"Give me liberty or give me death."

The creator's concern is the conquest of nature.The parasite's concern is the conquest of men.

- Howard Roark, The Fountainhead

A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a concious, rational, disciplined process of thought... or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions...

- Philosophy: Who Needs It

Intellectual honesty consists in taking ideas seriously. To take ideas seriously means that you intend to live by, to practice, any idea you accept as true.

- Philosophy: Who Needs It

Thank you, Nina.

Of course, we need philosophy/otherwise how do we think? nina

These two - reason and freedom - are corollaries, and their relationship is reciprocal: when men are rational, freedom wins; when men are free, reason wins.

- Philosophy: Who Needs It

Ayn Rand lived until 1982, eight years after her surgery.

Her life, of course, was NOT tragic. She herself said she achieved "most of her ambitious program". She lives on because of her outstanding works.

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Not knowing for decades what was happening to her loved ones must have brought Ayn extreme sorrow. Not being able to communicate with her parents who lived under tyranny, never setting eyes on them again - she lived through this tragedy while writing great books, while saying, "My purpose is to enjoy my life in a rational way ..."

Interesting background; yet, I consider her life was difficult but not tragic. And good for her that she made something out of it and hopefully the cancer stayed in remission. nina

Ayn Rand had her share of tragedies. And difficulties - The Fountainhead was rejected by 12 publishers.

I am very happy that she achieved "most of her ambitious program". She deserved success and happiness.

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From Wikipedia (about Ayn Rand):

"Rand was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia ...

Rand was twelve at the time of the Russian revolution of 1917, and her family life was disrupted by the rise of the Bolshevik party. Her father's pharmacy was confiscated by the Soviets, and the family fled to Crimea to recover financially. ...

In February 1926, she arrived in the United States at the age of 21...

Although Rand had written 1,200 letters to her family in the Soviet Union, and had attempted to bring them to the United States, she had ceased contacting them in 1937 after reading a notice in the post office that letters from Americans might imperil Russians at risk from Stalinist repression. ...

Rand underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1974..."

You are lucky that few tragedies have gotten in you way. nina

From "Ayn Rand Answers [The best of her Q & A]":

Q: What is your purpose in life?

A: My purpose is to enjoy my life in a rational way: to use my mind to the greatest extent possible; to pursue, admire, and support human greatness; to make all my choices rationally; to expand my knowledge constantly. That's a pretty ambitious program, and I've achieved most of it. (page 231)