Posts

Friday Filosophy v.06.17.2022

Friday Filosophy v.06.17.2022

Alice O’Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum Russian: Алиса Зиновьевна Розенбаум .February 2, 1905 – March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand was a Russian-born American writerscreenwriterplaywright and philosopher

She published several popular books in the United States during the mid-1900s, including her two best-selling novelsAtlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, plus We the Living and Anthem. Her novels promoted a viewpoint of laissez-faire capitalism as a political and social goal. It is a kind of political philosophy known in the U.S.A. as libertarian conservatism. She called this philosophy ‘objectivism‘. 

Rand was born in St. PetersburgRussia and grew up during the Russian Revolution, in the years after World War I. She left Russia to visit relatives in Chicago in the United States when she was 21 years old. She did not want to return to live under Communism, and stayed in the US. She changed her name, partly to protect her family in Russia. Rand moved to California to become a movie writer.

Movies at the time did not have sound, and stories were mimed on camera. Dialogue was not important, so Rand could write simple stories while she improved her English language skills.

Rand met Frank O’Connor on a movie set, when they both appeared as extras. When O’Connor married Rand in 1929, she could live permanently in America. She later became an American citizen. O’Connor gave up his acting career, to work full-time so Rand could write full-time. Later he retired, when Rand’s work made a good income. He began painting late in his life. He died in 1979.

Rand was a longtime tobacco smoker. She had lung cancer, but she recovered from the disease after surgery. She died of cardiovascular disease in New York City on March 6, 1982.

  • A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
  • Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. 
  • The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. 
  • Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone. 
  • The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity. 
  • 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. 
  • Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. 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. 
  • 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. 
  • Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).
  • Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values. 
  • Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision. 
  • Upper classes are a nation’s past; the middle class is its future. 
  • 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.
  • 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. 
  • Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason. 
  • Do not ever say that the desire to ‘do good’ by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives. 
  • When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.

The Time is Now.

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.

 

Friday Filosophy #2016-19

Today, in Friday Filosophy #2016-19, I would like to explore excellence. Performance Excellence is the title of our second level of management training for parts and service management in the capital goods industry,

 

Good, better, best. Never let it rest. ‘Til your good is better and your better is best.

St. Jerome

 

I’d rather attempt to do something great and fail than to attempt to do nothing and succeed.

Robert H. Schuller

 

In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.

Nikos Kazantzakis

 

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.

Charles H. Swindoll

 

Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.

Og Mandino

 

What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.

Ralph Marston

 

You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.

Rabindranath Tagore

 

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

C.S. Lewis

 

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

Confucius

 

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

Ayn Rand

 

The time is now.

Friday Filosophy #2015-16

I am sharing a series of quotes for Friday Filosophy #2015-16.

 

  • A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
  • Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.
  • Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.
  • We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where 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.
  • Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but not power to escape the necessity of choice.
  • Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).
  • The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.
  • If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.
  • Happiness is the state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.
  • The ladder of success is best climbed on the rungs of opportunity.
  • So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked, what is the root of all money?
  • There are two sides to every issues: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.
  • Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.
  • 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.
  • The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody decided not to see.
  • Rights are not a matter of numbers – and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.
  • The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.
  • The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

 

That is the power of a THINKER. Those are some quotes from Ayn Rand – the woman who so many disparage because she speaks so clearly and so truthfully that it scares those who are oppressors.  They are oppressors in the name of protecting others, when in fact they are trying to control all.

On a personal note, I support freedom for everyone who wants to do, to act and explore. But I do not support anyone who tries to limit me by limiting my options and choices.

Please read and enjoy the quotes, and think about them if you will. Thanks.

 

The time is now.