Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man's first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.

...If peace were the goal of today's intellectuals, a failure of that magnitude -- and the evidence of unspeakable suffering on so large a scale -- would make them pause and check their statist premises. Instead, blind to everything but their hatred for capitalism, they are now asserting that 'poverty breeds wars' ... But the question is: What breeds poverty? If you look a the world of today and if you look back at history, you will see the answer: the degree of a country's freedom is the degree of its prosperity.

Degrees do not matter... one does not bargain about inches of evil.

Observe, in politics, that the term extremism has become a synonym of "evil," regardless of the content of the issue (the evil is not what you are extreme about, but that you are "extreme" - i.e., consistent).

Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.

Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgement and nothing can help you escape it - that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life.

That an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.