|
c30924c
|
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: and One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
|
|
ayn-rand
books
children-s-literature
education
fantasy
jrr-tolkien
life-changing
lord-of-the-rings
reading
real-world
|
John Rogers |
|
543e505
|
I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.
|
|
ayn-rand
galt
objectivism
philosophy
taggart
|
Ayn Rand |
|
bd398ef
|
We are on strike against martyrdom--and against the moral code that demands it. We are on strike against those who believe that one man must exist for the sake of another. We are on strike against the morality of cannibals, be it practiced in body or in spirit. We will not deal with men on any terms but ours--and our terms are a moral code which holds that man is an end in himself and not the means to any end of others.
|
|
ayn-rand
individualism
objectivism
rational-egoism
|
Ayn Rand |
|
d429c40
|
"At least two important conservative thinkers, Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss, were unbelievers or nonbelievers and in any case contemptuous of Christianity. I have my own differences with both of these savants, but is the Republican Party really prepared to disown such modern intellectuals as it can claim, in favor of a shallow, demagogic and above all sectarian religiosity? Perhaps one could phrase the same question in two further ways. At the last election, the GOP succeeded in increasing its vote among American Jews by an estimated five percentage points. Does it propose to welcome these new adherents or sympathizers by yelling in the tones of that great Democrat bigmouth William Jennings Bryan? By insisting that evolution is 'only a theory'? By demanding biblical literalism and by proclaiming that the Messiah has already shown himself? If so, it will deserve the punishment for hubris that is already coming its way. (The punishment, in other words, that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson believed had struck America on Sept. 11, 2001. How can it be that such grotesque characters, calling down divine revenge on the workers in the World Trade Center, are allowed a respectful hearing, or a hearing at all, among patriotic Republicans?).
|
|
2001
2003
american-jews
atheism
ayn-rand
biblical-literalism
christian-fundamentalism
christian-right
christianity
creationism
democratic-party-united-states
evolution
fundamentalism
jerry-falwell
jesus
jews
leo-strauss
pat-robertson
politics
religion
republican-party-united-states
sectarianism
september-11-attacks
united-states
us-elections-2000
william-jennings-bryan
world-trade-center
|
Christopher Hitchens |
|
02e1fa5
|
"But I still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years of transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were going, and went on, in blindness and cowardice, to their fate. I wonder, for it is hard for me to conceive how men who knew the word "I," could give it up and not know what they lost. But such has been the story, for I have lived in the City of the damned, and I know what horror men permitted to be brought upon them."
|
|
ayn-rand
freedom
individuality
|
Ayn Rand |
|
905dbb4
|
"You want to know what's wrong with the world?" Dad paused. "It's this alienation that permeates every aspect of humanity."
|
|
ayn-rand
christianity
humanity
objectivism
philosophy
world-views
|
Mark David Henderson |