Famous Quotes & Sayings

Barbara Jordan

We must exchange the philosophy of excuse - what I am is beyond my control for the philosophy of responsibility.

Barbara Kingsolver

So one time when I was working in this motel one of the toilets leaked and I had to replace the flapper ball. Here's what it said on the package; I kept it till I knew it by heart: 'Please Note. Parts are included for all installations, but no installation requires all of the parts.' That's kind of my philosophy about men. I don't think there's an installation out there that could use all my parts.

Baruch Spinoza

Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.

Baruch Spinoza

I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy, I know that I understand the true philosophy.

Augustine Birrell

History is a pageant and not a philosophy.

Ayelet Waldman

Those of us whose parenting style can be described as "a series of reflexes, instincts, and minute-by-minute adjustments," as Julie of A Little Pregnant puts it, rather than as a philosophy, are less invested in our own practices. What we do is often less a matter of conviction than one of convenience. What we need to remember is that there is no need to apologize for that, even in the face of the most red-faced outrage.

Ayn Rand

The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently; they are most helplessly in its power.

Ayn Rand

Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.

Ayn Rand

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it.

Baha'u'llah

Nor shall the seeker reach his goal unless he sacrifice all things. That is, whatever he has seen, and heard, and understood (before), all must he set at naught, that he may enter the Realm of the Spirit, which is the City of God.

Ayn Rand

Namely, if I am challenging the base of all these institutions, I'm challenging the moral code of altruism. The precept that man's moral duty is to live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others. Which is the present day morality.

Ayn Rand

The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

Ayn Rand

In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone. An architect needs clients, but he does not subordinate his work to their wishes. They need him, but they do not order a house just to give him commission. Men exchange their work by free, mutual consent to mutual advantage when their personal interests agree and they both desire the exchange.

Ayn Rand

Collectivism requires self-sacrifice, the subordination of one's interests to those of others.

Ayn Rand

[Altruism] is a moral system which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the sole justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, value and virtue. This is the moral base of collectivism, of all dictatorships.

Ayn Rand

The social system based on and consonant with the altruist morality-with the code of self-sacrifice- is socialism, in all or any of its variants: fascism, Nazism, communism. All of them treat man as a sacrificial animal to be immolated for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the society, the state.

Ayn Rand

Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Don't ignore your own desires.... Don't sacrifice them. Examine their cause. There is a limit to how much you should have to bear.

Ayn Rand

America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.

Fawaz Gerges

The roots of the problem lie with foreign policy rather than in society, civilization or American culture,

Bertrand Russell

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.

Benjamin Disraeli

The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.

Calvin Coolidge

Whenever Nature's bounty is in danger of exhaustion, the chemist has sought for a substitute. The conquest of disease has made great progress as a result of your efforts. Wherever we look, the work of the chemist has raised the level of our civilization and has increased the productive capacity of the nation. Waste materials, formerly cast aside, are now being utilized.

Carroll Quigley

Western civilization presents one of the most difficult tasks for historical analysis, because it is not yet finished, because we are a part of it and lack perspective, and because it presents considerable variation from our pattern of historical change.

Carroll Quigley

For the first time in its history, Western Civilization is in danger of being destroyed internally by a corrupt, criminal ruling cabal which is centered around the Rockefeller interests, which include elements from the Morgan, Brown, Rothschild, Du Pont, Harriman, Kuhn-Loeb, and other groupings as well. This junta took control of the political, financial, and cultural life of America in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Al Gore

The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more — if more should be required — the future of human civilization is at stake.

Booker T. Washington

The longer I live and the more I study the question, the more I am convinced that it is not so much the problem of what you will do with Negro, as what the Negro will do with you and your 'civilization'.

Edgar Mitchell

The main problem is that we, as an Earth civilization, have not come to understand ourselves - see ourselves in a cosmic sense at all.