objectivists

"Any person who says, outright, that they want to be president, should be automatically disqualified."

"Money is good. Profit is good. Human thriving is good. Free voluntary exchange is good. None of the above are in conflict with human well-being."

"Villains make heroes possible. They are the obstacles the hero must overcome to achieve his full potential. Just as life’s resistance tests our mettle and enables us to reach our potential."

"Captalism is the system of economic, spiritual, and political liberty that holds free choices as the cornerstone of a good society."

"Any country that violates the sovereignty of its own citizens cannot claim the status of a sovereign state."

"Monsters and demons are metaphors for the dark side of human nature. The irrational. The fanatical. The animal."

"Take the term ‘liberal’ away from the political left. ‘Liberal’ (like ‘progressive’), implies a reasoned, forward-thinking approach to life. It comes from the same root as ‘liberty’ and doesn’t reflect political leftism. The term liberal should never be applied to an advocate of statism."

"No good ethics requires you to be decent to the indecent."

"Power does not corrupt. Corrupt people seek power."

"There's no place in a civilized society for mobs, so I'll always stand agaisnt the mobs. Always."

"It’s your life! Don’t let the sense that somebody might think you’re absurd crush your joy. Who cares what they think! It's your joy. Embrace it. Embrace it."

"A rational society and human liberty go hand in hand. Medievalist supersition and moral subjectivism are two sides of the same coin. And both are killing our republic."

"People who seek power over others are the weakest people on Earth. That means Washington is populated not by powerful movers and shakers, but by neurotic weaklings."

"Politeness is wasted on the dishonest, who will always take advantage of any well-intended concession."

"When we start fighting crime by any means necessary we become guilty of the same hypocrisy as law enforcement agencies throughout history that break the rules to get the villains, and so become villains themselves."

"What an age of innocence it was, the Watergate era... way back in the halcyon days when the US could be contrasted with totalitarian regimes on matters of surveillance."

"I, for instance, am a jackass, and this anguishes me quite a bit, or at least it would if I were not so fond of being a jackass, which has long been a hobby of mine."

"The main point seems to be that I'm arrogant and narcissistic, which should be news to exactly four people."

"In conclusion, they should let me out of jail."

"The less said about my extended family back in ranch country the better, as I don't want the ATF burning them alive."

"I am a tremendous optimist for someone who has grown up amid the twilight of American competence."

"Anyone who dismisses out of hand evidence that U.S. intelligence agencies still do some of the things that they now brag about having done not too long ago is not a skeptic, but a fool."

"Being an atheist is like not owning a TV – completely rational, but best kept to one's self."

"The truth is that I am a sentient computer program and I fully intend to burn your cities to the ground."

"I would love to debate any politician in any western state on the question of whether the rule of law ought to be respected in a world where even the most "respectable" governments establish intelligence agencies that routinely violate those laws at taxpayer expense and at no real penalty to anyone involved."

"We're in a state of conflict with the Government. Either we are going to jail or we're going to win."

"This is not the “rule of law”...it is the “rule of law enforcement.”"

"We can only be what we are, nothing more, nothing less.- Kahlan- Wizard's First Rule."

"No one ever goes into battle thinking God is on the other side. -Zedd, Wizard's First Rule"

"nothing is one dimensional. Nothing exists that has only one side, look at the whole. - Darken Rahl, Wizard's First Rule"

"Fantasy allows you to shine a different kind of light on human beings. I believe the only valid use of fantasy is to illustrate important human themes. Magic in my novels is used in three ways: the simplest is as a metaphor for technology. A good example is a magic carpet. There's no magic carpet in my novels, but if someone needs to travel a great distance, they could use a magic carpet, while in a contemporary novel they'd use a car. The second way, and I think the most important, is as a metaphor for individuality and individual ability. The mediocre world doesn't want individuals to rise above what everyone else is doing. The third way I use magic is as a metaphor for coming out of an age of mysticism into a Renaissance. So, in a way it's the struggle between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance. … I never allow my characters to use magic to solve their problems. Some of their peripheral problems are solved through their magical abilities, but it's couched in terms of overcoming those problems in a thinking way. The major conflicts in the books are always solved through human intellect, through thinking out the problem and coming up with a solution. It's never "I'll just wave my magic wand over the bad guys and have them all fall down dead!""

"No one is as fanatical as a convert. -Kahlan, Wizard's First Rule"

"People use democracy as a free-floating abstraction disconnected from reality. Democracy in and of itself is not necessarily good. Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action. All men have the right to live their own life. Democracy must be rooted in a rational philosophy that first and foremost recognizes the right of an individual. A few million Imperial Order men screaming for the lives of a much smaller number of people in the New World may win a democratic vote, but it does not give them the right to those lives, or make their calls for such killing right. Democracy is not a synonym for justice or for freedom. Democracy is not a sacred right sanctifying mob rule. Democracy is a principle that is subordinate to the inalienable rights of the individual."

"Celebrating faith over reason is merely a way of denying what is, in favor of embracing any whim that strikes your fancy."

"Your life is yours alone, rise up and live it!- Richard, Faith of the Fallen"

"Never let a beautiful woman pick your path for you when there is a man in her line of sight. -Adie, Wizard's First Rule*"

"reality is nothing, perception is everything. -Zedd, Wizard's First Rule"

"Nothing is ever easy. Zedd- Wizard's First Rule"

"People know what they love … Even those whose lives are floundering. If they're directionless, it's not because they lack knowledge of what they want. It's because they lack the courage to acknowledge that they want it."

"Capitalism is the greatest benefactor man has ever had. It is time for the thinking men and women of every nation to recognize that fact and to fully embrace the system of the mind and of individual rights. Men and women of all countries unite - in your support of capitalism. You have a world of joyous achievement to win."

"Nazis generally did not have to kill in order to seize the property of Germans other than Jews. This was because, as we have seen, they established socialism by stealth, through price controls, which served to maintain the outward guise and appearance of private ownership. The private owners were thus deprived of their property without knowing it and thus felt no need to defend it by force."

"In any type of socialist state, Nazi or Communist, the government's economic plan is part of the supreme law of the land."

"What specifically established de facto socialism in Nazi Germany was the introduction of price and wage controls in 1936."

"If the individual [in Nazi Germany] is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State."

"The combination of price controls with this further set of controls constitutes the de facto socialization of the economic system. For it means that the government then exercises all of the substantive powers of ownership."

"When one remembers that the word "Nazi" was an abbreviation for "der Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiters Partei" — in English translation: the National Socialist German Workers' Party — Mises's identification might not appear all that noteworthy. For what should one expect the economic system of a country ruled by a party with "socialist" in its name to be but socialism?"

"The identification of Nazi Germany as a socialist state was one of the many great contributions of Ludwig von Mises."

"Private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive."

"The requirements of enforcing a system of price and wage controls shed major light on the totalitarian nature of socialism — most obviously, of course, on that of the German or Nazi variant of socialism, but also on that of Soviet-style socialism as well."

"The truth is that economic competition is the very opposite of competition in the animal kingdom. It is not a competition in the grabbing off of scarce nature-given supplies, as it is in the animal kingdom. Rather, it is a competition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth."