Self-esteem is reliance on one's power to think. It cannot be replaced by one's power to deceive. The self-confidence of a scientist and the self-confidence of a con man are not interchangeable states, and do not come from the same psychological universe. The success of a man who deals with reality augments his self-confidence. The success of a con man augments his panic.

The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice,' but integrity.

No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.

Whenever anyone accuses some person of being 'unfeeling,' he means that that person is just.

The Romanticists predominantly, were enemies of capitalism, which they regarded as a prosaic, materialistic, “petty bourgeois” system — never realizing that it was the only system that could make freedom, individuality and the pursuit of values possible in practice.

Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burnt at the stake he'd taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived and he lifted darkness from the face of the Earth.

...only the pleasure which proceeds from a rational value judgement can be regarded as moral, pleasure, as such, is not a guide to action nor a standard of morality.