“Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.”

Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.

People don’t want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think.

Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.

Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue.

To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul – would you understand why that’s much harder?

Self respect is something that can’t be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man’s pretense at it.

A businessman cannot force you to buy his product; if he makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences; if he fails, he takes the loss. If bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences; if he fails, he passes the loss on to you.

My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.

I could die for you. But I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, live for you.

The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow.

If one’s actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others.

A culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiate d masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men.

The basic need of the creator is independence.

If a society is to be free, its government has to be controlled.

Freedom is to ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.

Capitalism has been called a system of greed.

In the very shadows of doubt a thread of reason (so to speak) begins, by whose guidance we shall escape to the clearest light.

The light of humane minds is perspicuous words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity, reason is the pace.

Heaven and Hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and bad.

Recovery isn’t an end-game. It’s an every day, by the grace of God, I choose me, I choose them, I’ve come this far, I will not go back, war for my soul that I will not lose.

The Power of a Man is his present means, to obtain some future apparent Good.

The condition of man . . . is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.

As a draft-animal is yoked in a wagon, even so the spirit is yoked in this body.

Our aspect of neighborly love is that we must not merely will our neighbors good, but actually work to bring it about.