Liberty and the Will to Power Quotes

“Evolution has no sum; there is no final destination. It is a process of becoming. This process has produced in man a unique ability to choose. Henceforth, we will become what we choose to become. Let us choose strength over weakness; competence over impotence; pragmatism over piety; victory over defeat. And most importantly, let us always choose liberty over slavery, lest we lose our ability to choose at all.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“One doesn’t live eternally simply because they are remembered. Any dead man can be remembered; only a great man can die and still live on. For your body to die, but your will to live on - that is immortality. If a man’s body has long since decomposed but the influence his will had in this world still churns this day, that man is more alive than most men will ever be.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“Should they send their dogs after me in an attempt to subdue me, may they find me in the presence of a pack of wolves, equally set to task. So tend to your flock, you shepherds and dogs, but proceed with caution if you wish to cage the wolf. I have not lost my instincts. I have not forgotten who I am. My liberty will die with you and I.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“Empathy is biological just as much as desire; why should empathy prevail, and desire submit? The higher man can possess great amounts of empathy, but he doesn’t bestow it without discrimination just as he doesn’t succumb to his desire without deliberation.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“Liberty is a matter of selection; a predisposition; a type of destiny - only those fit for it will have it.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“The masses take to the polls and attempt to cast their will upon the world; how pathetic, that the only attempt to power is a plea to those who already possess it. But this is modern-day revolution; the struggle of the “oppressed;” the path from equality to something more.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“The fulness of our experience is not something divisible. We don’t take-in the Sistine Chapel by examining single brush-strokes. The sensation of love isn’t experienced by understanding its chemicals. There is no mathematical formula that results in happiness; no set of principles to avoid despair. We may inhabit the physical world, a world that can be reduced to atoms and equations, but our life is something transcendent. This much, we cannot deny.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“When we contemplate the how and why of this life - how to live it; why to live it - I suggest that to start this quest from first principles and base units is nonsense. For one doesn’t know the mountain by studying the pebble. To know the mountain, we conquer it, and only after attaining its heights do we gain a true perspective of the thing itself; as if it were Olympus and we sat upon the throne of Zeus.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“But am I satisfied to know merely the structure of the rainbow and how it came to be? Is that why I gaze upon it; with thoughts of refraction and wave frequency? Am I better off, now that I know this celestial arch isn’t divinely inspired – that there isn’t some meaningful purpose to it? Is that truly the answer I wanted when I asked myself where this spectacle came from? Do I stare up at the night sky because I search for the elements that comprise the star? Do we rationalize the tears that are shed at the birth of a child and the death of a loved-one? Do we ask ourselves why we dance? Do we contemplate that question before we allow the music to stir us? Do we allow it at all, or does it allow us? Not a single note, by itself, compels a couple to gracefully embrace, yet, this is how they would have us understand it - music, merely a series of connected notes and nothing more.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“Your argument may be consistent, but it is not persuasive, and the purpose of argument is derived from the latter.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“The market-anarchist, like the libertarian, believes their consistency to fundamental axioms is enough to overturn the rational foundation of the State, and maybe it could if the State were actually founded on a faith in rational axioms – but it most certainly is not.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“The shelter of statism was built by men, not with the cracking of a whip, rather, with the shared expectation of paradise. The Tower of Babel is being rebuilt, and on the foundation of sinking sand. Mankind has forgotten the lesson once harshly dealt. Constructing a system to reach your highest ideal is not permitted by the nature of the very same ideal you strive for. Life is too vast and extraordinary to be contained within conceptual and logical theory, yet alone man-made systems. One need only to glance at our history books to watch the paradox of absolutist ideals unravel.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“Of course, the irony of it all is that when the individual is prioritized to such a high degree, that none can be ignored, the most diseased and superfluous must lead the herd so as not to be left behind. Naturally, the needs of the individual become less important than the needs of the collective. “Every individual is sacrificed and serves as a tool.” What began with the exaltation of the individual ends with the extinction of any such character.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“The first challenge of every man is to know himself. The second challenge is to become himself. The final challenge is to overcome himself.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“This is life; the totality of experience. For one could never experience the whole of life without these fulfilling dualities and tragic paradoxes. ...If man was not pulled in two opposing directions at once, what choice would he ever have to make? What is the will without choice? What is life without the will?”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“Our capacity for reason brought us out of the jungles and gave us dominion, not only over the beasts that prey upon us, but also the beast within us.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“All humans exert a will to power; a will to have an effect on their existence; to attempt to fulfill who and what they believe they are. And power necessarily leads to imbalances; this is inescapable. For if your power was equally matched by everything in opposition to you, then nothing would have any power at all and nothingness would result from this stagnation - because there is something, there must be a power that prevails.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian

“A caged lion is a tragedy, but a lion that enters the cage willingly is no lion at all.”
― Tanner Cook, Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian