The Book Of Words

"I exist for no man and I ask no man to exist for me" - Ayn Rand I won't stop you if you choose to follow me though... silly person.

This collection started out as merely a scratch pad for me to collect thoughs on. I would write down those short sayings that I wished to ponder... be they from myself or from others. Over time it grew and I came to refer to it as a book entitled For I Stand Alone. The title was a sort of personal mantra at one point in my life, and in many ways still is. Hopefully you find some meaning in some of these as well.

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. -Ayn Rand

I exist for no man and I ask no man to exist for me. - Ayn Rand

A straight line in Euclidian space never meets. A straight line in Einstienian space eventually meets itself. Which realm do you live in?

Life is never ending, without beginning or end because we don't remember either.

It's not what happens to us but how we respond to what happens.

People spend their lives avoiding obvious problems.

People spend their lives avoiding obvious solutions to complex problems.

Saving the rainforest is for amateurs, I'm out to save the world.

While running to catch my freedom I tripped and fell.

Right now our memories are becoming longer while our live are becoming shorter.

True friendship and love are synonymous.

Life is a game with the highest possible stakes.

You have to play their game well before you can play your own.

You may be looked at by others but you are judged by your peers.

We spend so much time accepting what is on the outside that we seldom make the effort to see what is inside.

Necessity is the mother of invention and curiosity is the mother of discovery, then what is desire the mother of?

There is no conflict of good vs. evil until one side wins, they're all good vs. good.

No matter where you go in life, never forget where you've already been. For when you get to a dead end you can always return and take a new path.

I have a world of people to teach and only a lifetime to do it in.

The misconception of a majority is that people must not assert their own personalities but must do as others do because it's always been that way.

The majority is never right.

Although you may lust for what you see, you love for what you can't.

Success lies in achieving the top of the food chain.

If you put a cat in a sealed airtight box for a day the cat is neither dead or alive until you open the box but instead exists as a field of probabilities.

There may come a time when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, but I am still betting on the lion. - Henry Wheeler Shaw, 1818 - 1885

It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism while wolves remain of a different opinion. - William Ralph Inge, D.D., 1860 - 1954

When in doubt tell the truth. - Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910

The truth is the one thing that nobody will believe. - George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950

Rascality has limits; stupidity has not. - Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769 - 1821

If anyone doubts my veracity, I can only say that I pity his lack of faith. - Baron Munchausen, 1737 - 1794

Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood. - Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900

Premenstrual Syndrome: Just before their periods women behave the way men do all the time.

God created women to tame man. - Voltaire, 1694 - 1778

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety: other women cloy the appetites they feed; but she makes hungry where most she satisfies - ... - William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616

Dear Lord, give me chastity and self restraint... but not yet, O Lord, not yet! - Saint Augustine, A.D. 354 - 430

Do not put off until tomorrow what can be enjoyed today. - Josh Billings, 1818 - 1885

Democracy can withstand anything but democrats.

Violence never settles anything. - Genghis Khan, 1162 - 1227

He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death. - H.H. Munro, 1870 - 1916

One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged. - Heinrich Heine, 1797 - 1856

In walking a tiger, use a long stick. - Mao Tse-Tung, 1893 - 1976

Whatever you do, you'll regret it. - Allan McLeod Gray, 1905 - 1975

When it comes to a choice between kindness and honesty, my vote is for kindness, every time - giving or receiving.

All kings is mostly rapscallions. - Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910

I'm no longer depressed, I'm suicidal.

I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs. - H.L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956

Don't lock the barn after it is stolen. - Hartley M. Baldwin

The mice voted to bell the cat. - Aesop, c. 620 - c. 560 B.C.

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears that this is true. - James Branch Cabell, 1879 - 1958

Murphy was an optimist. (on Murphy's Law)

There's one born every minute. - P.T. Barnum, 1810 - 1891

It's a poor sort of memory that works backwards. - Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832 - 1898

We are too proud to fight.

You can't cheat an honest man. He has to have larceny in his heart in the first place. - Claude William Dukenfield, 1880 - 1946

There's no way to rule innocent 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. You make so many things illegal that it is impossible to live without breaking laws. Do you really think the government wants those laws to be observed? They want them broken. Who wants a nation full of law abiding citizens? - Ayn Rand

The biscuits and the syrup never come out even.

Pride is the middle class substitute for class.

In absolute darkness only our voices distinguish us; the loud become feared and hated; the soft become lost and forgotten.

You can't have your cake and let your neighbour eat it too.

Be wary of the person who believes that need is holier than ability or that pity is holier than justice. - Ayn Rand

John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the Gods, he broke his chains and he withdrew his fire - until the day when men withdrew their vultures. - Ayn Rand

If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders - what would you tell him to do?
Answer: to shrug. - Ayn Rand

What is morality? Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price. But where does one find it? - Ayn Rand

Robin Hood is remembered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making other pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don't have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, has demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors - the double parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich - whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal. And this has brought us to a world where the more a man produces, the closer he comes to the loss of all rights, until, is his ability is great enough, he becomes a rightless creature delivered as prey to any claimant - while in order to be placed above rights, above principles, above morality, placed where anything is permitted to him, even plunder and murder, all a man has to do is be in need. Do you wonder why the world is collapsing around us? - Ayn Rand

Did it ever occur to you, that there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires - if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical?

The ultimate quest has no ending, that is what gives it it's ultimate value.

The essence of a soldier: You offer yourself to be slain, not set yourself up as a slayer.

The world is too dangerous to live in. Not because of the people who do evil but because of the people who sit by and let it happen. - Albert Einstein

Nothing is perfect because everything is built on a leap of faith.

A person who asks questions is never ignorant.

He strains to hear a whisper who refuses to hear a shout.

The acceptance of unconscious mental processes represents a decisive step towards a new orientation in the world and in science.

Do I believe in peace between all people? Universal peace is the wish of all people but I do not believe it can ever be achieved until mankind as a whole has a common cause to unite it. Even then, peace will last until that cause is over, no longer. Do I believe in drugs and other false pleasures? If you can not get high on life alone, then life is not worth having. Do I believe everything should be free? No I disagree strongly on this point. Anything worth having has a value, not necessarily a monetary value, and if you receive it for free, someone, somewhere is paying for it. That makes you a parasite on society.

"... the time of druids is over!" "You think it dies with the coming of Caesar? Then you are doubly a fool. We will always be needed. Who else understands the rhythms of the earth and the strength to be drawn from the patterns of the stars? Who else knows what sacrifices are needed to feed and reward the land for it's fertility? Who else can placate the spirits of the insects so they don't devastate our crops? Without the intervention of the druids, Man in his ignorance would rape and plunder the earth as surely as Caesar rapes and plunders the tribes. The earth would cease to provide, then there would be disaster." - Morgan Llywelyn, in Druids

It's not that I don't accept the views of the establishment, it's that I don't think they'd like mine.

People as individuals are very liberally minded, as a group they are closed minded.

I have become Shiva, God, destroyer of worlds.

Man is born free and everywhere is in chains. -- J. J. Rousseau. (18th Century French "philosophe.")

"Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention." -- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values. -- Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged