Philosophy Quotes

“Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It?

“Serenity comes from the ability to say “Yes” to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say “No” to the wrong choices made by others.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will answer: “No.” Altruism says: “Yes.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Your subconscious is like a computer—more complex a computer than men can build—and its main function is the integration of your ideas. Who programs it? Your conscious mind. If you default, if you don’t reach any firm convictions, your subconscious is programmed by chance—and you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted. But one way or the other, your computer gives you print-outs, daily and hourly, in the form of emotions—which are lightning-like estimates of the things around you, calculated according to your values. If you programmed your computer by conscious thinking, you know the nature of your values and emotions. If you didn’t, you don’t.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“An emotion as such tells you nothing about reality, beyond the fact that something makes you feel something. Without a ruthlessly honest commitment to introspection—to the conceptual identification of your inner states—you will not discover what you feel, what arouses the feeling, and whether your feeling is an appropriate response to the facts of reality, or a mistaken response, or a vicious illusion produced by years of self-deception. The men who scorn or dread introspection take their inner states for granted, as an irreducible and irresistible primary, and let their emotions determine their actions. This means that they choose to act without knowing the context (reality), the causes (motives), and the consequences (goals) of their actions.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“There are no defenders of man’s mind—in the world’s greatest scientific-technological civilization. All that is left is a battle between the mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle—between men guided by their feelings and men guided by their reflexes.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Today, intelligence is neither recognized nor rewarded, but is being systematically extinguished in a growing flood of brazenly flaunted irrationality.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“It is eminently reasonable that men should seek to associate with those who share their convictions and values. It is impossible to deal or even to communicate with men whose ideas are fundamentally opposed to one’s own (and one should be free not to deal with them). All proper associations are formed or joined by individual choice and on conscious, intellectual grounds (philosophical, political, professional, etc.)—not by the physiological or geographical accident of birth, and not on the ground of tradition. When men are united by ideas, i.e., by explicit principles, there is no room for favors, whims, or arbitrary power: the principles serve as an objective criterion for determining actions and for judging men, whether leaders or members.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Love is a response to values. The amoralist’s actual self-appraisal is revealed in his abnormal need to be loved (but not in the rational sense of the word)—to be “loved for himself,” i.e., causelessly. James Taggart reveals the nature of such a need: “I don’t want to be loved for anything. I want to be loved for myself—not for anything I do or have or say or think. For myself—not for my body or mind or words or works or actions.” (Atlas Shrugged.) When his wife asks: “But then . . . what is yourself?” he has no answer.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“The fundamental evil of government grants is the fact that men are forced to pay for the support of ideas diametrically opposed to their own. This is a profound violation of an individual’s integrity and conscience.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“A political battle is merely a skirmish fought with muskets; a philosophical battle is a nuclear war.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Since early childhood, their emotions have been conditioned by the tribal premise that one must “belong,” one must be “in,” one must swim with the “mainstream,” one must follow the lead of “those who know.” A man’s frustrated mind adds another emotion to the tribal conditioning: a blindly bitter resentment of his own intellectual subservience. Modern men are gregarious and antisocial at the same time. They have no inkling of what constitutes a rational human association.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Reason functions by integrating perceptual data into concepts.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Reason, according to Objectivism, is not merely a distinguishing attribute of man; it is his fundamental attribute-his basic means of survival. Therefore, whatever reason requires in order to function is a necessity of human life.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“The new “theory of justice” demands that men counteract the “injustice” of nature by instituting the most obscenely unthinkable injustice among men: deprive “those favored by nature” (i.e., the talented, the intelligent, the creative) of the right to the rewards they produce (i.e., the right to life)—and grant to the incompetent, the stupid, the slothful a right to the effortless enjoyment of the rewards they could not produce, could not imagine, and would not know what to do with.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“If a natural fact is neither just nor unjust, by what mental leap does it become a moral problem and an issue of justice? Why should those “favored by nature” be made to atone for what is not an injustice and is not of their making?”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“The field of extrospection is based on two cardinal questions: “What do I know?” and “How do I know it?” In the field of introspection, the two guiding questions are: “What do I feel?” and “Why do I feel it?” Most”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“... — what do I need philosophy for?" My answer is: In order to be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems — i.e., in order to be able to live on earth.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Only producers constitute a market - only men who trade products and services for products and services. In the role of producers, they represent a market’s supply; in the role of consumers, they represent a market’s demand. The law of supply and demand has an implicit subclause: that it involves the same people in both capacities. When this subclause is forgotten, ignored or evaded - you get the economic situation of today.
The man who consumes without producing is a parasite, whether is a welfare recipient or a rich playboy”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Money is the tool of men who have reached a high level of productivity and a long-range control over their lives. Money is not merely a tool of exchange: much more importantly, it is a tool of saving, which permits delayed consumption, and buys time for future production.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Mysticism is the acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“The only means of “changing” men is the same as the means of “changing” nature: knowledge - which, in regard to men, is to be used as a process of persuasion, when and if their minds are active; when they are not, one must leave them to the consequences of their own errors”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Intellectual honesty consists in taking ideas seriously. That means that you intend to live by, to practice, an idea you accept as true”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Abstract ideas are conceptual integrations which subsume an incalculable number of concretes - and without abstract ideas you would not be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems. You would be in the position of a new born infant”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“The two cardinal questions, the prime movers of a human mind—“Why?” and “What for?”—are alien to an anti-conceptual mentality. If asked, they elicit nothing beyond the conventionally accepted answers. The answers are usually some equivalent of “Such is life” or “One is supposed to.” Whose life? Blank out. Supposed—by whom? Blank out.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Almost unanimously, man is regarded as an unnatural phenomenon: either as a supernatural entity, whose mystic (divine) endowment, the mind (“soul”), is above nature—or as a subnatural entity, whose mystic (demoniacal) endowment, the mind, is an enemy of nature (“ecology”). The purpose of all such theories is to exempt man from the Law of Identity.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“A piece of paper will not feed you when there is no bread to eat. It will not build a factory when there are no steel girders to buy. It will not make shoes when there is no leather, no machines, no fuel. You have heard it said that today’s economy is afflicted by sudden, unpredictable shortages of various commodities. These are the advance symptoms of what is to come. You have heard economists say that they are puzzled by the nature of today’s problem: they are unable to understand why inflation is accompanied by recession—which is contrary to their Keynesian doctrines; and they have coined a ridiculous name for it: “stagflation.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Never mind the low wages and the harsh living conditions of the early years of capitalism. They were all that the national economies of the time could afford. Capitalism did not create poverty—it inherited it. Compared to the centuries of precapitalist starvation, the living conditions of the poor in the early years of capitalism were the first chance the poor had ever had to survive.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“Observe also that an honest theoretician does not try to present his ideas in the guise of their opposites. But Kant’s philosophy is presented as “pure reason”—altruism is presented as a doctrine of “love”—communism is presented as “liberation”—and egalitarianism is presented as “justice.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

“In mid-twentieth century, the intellectuals were traumatized by seeing their axiomatic bedrock disintegrate into thin ice. The concept of “majority will” collapsed when they saw that the majority was not with them and did not share their “ideals.” The concept of “majority welfare” collapsed when they discovered—through the experiences of communist Russia, Nazi Germany, welfare-state England, and sundry lesser socialist regimes—that only their hated adversary, the free, selfish, individualistic system of capitalism, is able to benefit the majority of the people (in fact, all of the people).”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It