Great Throughts Treasury

"The hero is the man dedicated to the creation and / or defense of reality-conforming, life-promoting values."

"A hero has faced it all: he need not be undefeated, but he must be undaunted."

"Altruism demands that an individual serve others, but doesn?t stipulate whether those others should be one?s family, or the homeless, or society as a whole. Collectivism states that, in politics, society comes first and the individual must obey. Collectivism is the application of the altruist ethics to politics."

"Collectivism is the political theory that states that the will of the people is omnipotent, an individual must obey; that society as a whole, not the individual, is the unit of moral value. ... Collectivism is the application of the altruist ethics to politics."

"During the financial crisis, I worked with hundreds of executives who struggled as a result of their thoughts about job security. When their beliefs changed, so did their emotional experience - and they were then able to focus on the task at hand more effectively."

"A hero holds purposes appropriate to man and is, therefore, a thinker."

"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."

"Find the beliefs that are strangling your feelings, challenge them for your sake as well as theirs, and see how it feels to love someone without a thought about the future, simply for who they are today."

"Each one of us has the power ? and must develop the will ? to be the hero of his own life. We believe in goals, in purposes, in achievement and in the joy of living"

"First, he must hold rational values, and to do this he must be a thinker."

"Even in this secular country, the threat posed by religious fundamentalists is never very far away. Every major religious text exhorts the same principles - that of unyielding obedience to a supernatural being, and renunciation of the intellect and personal aspirations."

"In the history of philosophy, the term rationalism has two distinct meanings. In one sense, it signifies an unbreached commitment to reasoned thought in contrast to any irrationalist rejection of the mind. In this sense, Aristotle and Ayn Rand are preeminent rationalists, opposed to any form of unreason, including faith. In a narrower sense, however, rationalism contrasts with empiricism as regards the false dichotomy between commitment to so-called pure reason (i.e., reason detached from perceptual reality) and an exclusive reliance on sense experience (i.e., observation without inference therefrom). Rationalism, in this sense, is a commitment to reason construed as logical deduction from non-observational starting points, and a distrust of sense experience (e.g., the method of Descartes). Empiricism, according to this mistaken dichotomy, is a belief that sense experience provides factual knowledge, but any inference beyond observation is a mere manipulation of words or verbal symbols (e.g., the approach of Hume). Both Aristotle and Ayn Rand reject such a false dichotomy between reason and sense experience; neither are rationalists in this narrow sense."

"For the first time in history, the rational and the good are fully armed in the battle against evil. Here we finally find the answer to our paradox; now we can understand the nature of the social power held by evil. Ultimately, the evil, the irrational, truly has no power. The evil men?s control of morality is transient; it lives on borrowed time made possible only by the errors of the good. In time, as more honest men grasp the truth, evil?s stranglehold will be easily broken."

"Here is the tragedy of theology in its distilled essence: The employment of high-powered human intellect, of genius, of profoundly rigorous logical deduction?studying nothing."

"If you're successful and stressed out, you're succeeding in spite of your stress, not because of it."

"Negative thoughts stick around because we believe them, not because we want them or choose them."

"Look closer at the stress in your own life and you can identify that negative emotions are always built on counterfactual statements."

"Many argue that Christianity is "different" from other religions - that it is primarily about love of one's fellow man. The Crusades, The Inquisition, Calvin's Geneva all prove that this is not the case. These events were pre-eminently about obedience to authority."

"leads inevitably to the most hideous oppression."

"It's time we learned the truth about stress. It's time we identified the thoughts that actually create our stress and learned to dismantle them one by one."

"Nothing is given to man on earth - struggle is built into the nature of life, and conflict is possible - the hero is the man who lets no obstacle prevent him from pursuing the values he has chosen."

"People around the world now complain about stressors every day, and the word shows up throughout professional and lay literature. But in reality there is no such thing as a stressor. Why not? Because nothing has the inherent power to provoke stress."

"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."

"Our group is trying to convince the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) to make its deregistration rules more flexible."

"People often say that stress is a motivator. What we're referring to when we say this is really better described as stimulation and engagement."

"Some people are so used to experiencing stress that they don't remember what life was like without it"

"Statism ? the subordination of the individual to the state -- leads inevitably to the most hideous oppression."

"Statism systematically violates the rights of individuals and is, therefore, immoral. Because it suppresses the mind and violates men's rights, it thereby causes abysmal poverty and is utterly impractical."

"Releasing contracted thoughts through insight is completely natural. When a child is scared of monsters in the dark, you don?t teach him to relax, breathe, or cope. You turn on the lights."

"Stress is a byproduct of subconscious beliefs you have about the world. You can't choose not to believe something. You believe it because you think it's true. To eliminate stress, you must learn to challenge these beliefs so that you see them differently."

"Remember that stress doesn't come from what's going on in your life. It comes from your thoughts about what's going on in your life."

"Stress is never a given. There are people who get divorced amicably. There are people who pack up and move with no emotional toll. There is no stressor 'out there' in the world. We experience stress - or we don't - depending on what we believe."

"Stress is the negative whirlwind of emotions that gets imposed on top of our stimulation and engagement."

"Stress is not the spice of life any more than arsenic is. And without it, you won't feel bored."

"Stress never comes directly from your circumstances. It comes from your thoughts about your circumstances."

"The deadline for compliance with very costly internal control reporting regulations is next year and I think lot of companies are evaluating how to avoid the costs."

"The elusive truth is that there is nothing stress-producing in the physical world. Things simply are. Molecules move. Light and sound appear."

"The less you think counterfactually, the less you experience stress. Stress, in this light, isn't a bad thing. It's simply a warning system telling you that your mind has lost touch with what's real."

"The more you worry, the more you throw off the delicate balance of hormones required for health."

"The hero is valorous because he stands up to every threat directed against his values. Heroism requires value conflict."

"The number of stressors has multiplied exponentially: traffic, money, success, work/life balance, the economy, the environment, parenting, family conflict, relationships, disease. As the nature of human life has become far more complicated, our ancient stress response hasn't been able to keep up."

"The reason humans experience so much more stress than other species isn't just because we think more, but also because we think differently."

"The truth is that stress doesn't come from your boss, your kids, your spouse, traffic jams, health challenges, or other circumstances. It comes from your thoughts about these circumstances."

"Theologians, and religionists in general, start with a fantasy premise and then proceed to apply rigorous formal logic to tease out its implications. Stark himself points out that ?theology consists of formal reasoning about God.?"

"Throughout history, independent minds have carried mankind forward. Whether they identified how to make fire or manufacture tools, develop rational philosophy or create man-glorifying art, pioneer scientific knowledge or invent the electric light, independent thinkers have created the goods on which human life and prosperity depend."

"Theology is the purest expression of rationalism in the sense of proceeding by logical deduction from premises ungrounded in observable fact?deduction without reference to reality. The so-called thinking involved here is purely formal, observationally baseless, devoid of facts, cut off from reality. Thomas Aquinas, for example, was history?s foremost expert regarding the field of angelology. No one could match his knowledge of angels, and he devoted far more of his massive Summa Theologica to them than to physics."

"We all enjoy pushing ourselves to accomplish our objectives. But we don't need stress to get there."

"We need to distinguish between stress and stimulation. Having deadlines, setting goals, and pushing yourself to perform at capacity are stimulating. Stress is when you're anxious, upset, or frustrated, which dramatically reduce your ability to perform."

"To believe that your husband, wife, parents, kids, boss, job, bank account, or body is even partly responsible for your emotions, to think that there are bullets 'out there' that you have to contend with, that there are stressful life events to overcome, is to miss something vital."

"When a friend is sick, I see the situation for what it is, not what it isn't, and I offer to help as much as she wants, not as much as I want."