So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. . . . When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him by force. It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only against the man who starts its use. No, I do not share his evil or sink to his concept of morality: I merely grant him his choice, destruction, the only destruction he had the right to choose: his own.

There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.

When you force a man to act against his own choice and judgment, it's his thinking that you want him to suspend.

I will not die, it's the world that will end." paraphrase of unknown philosopher

It's the hardest thing in the world - to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kinds of courage.

Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it-that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life-that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.

Ideas, in a free society, are not a crime- and neither can they serve as the justification of a crime.