The purpose of the law is not to prevent a future offense, but to punish the one actually committed.

To preserve one's mind intact through a modern college education is a test of courage and endurance, but the battle is worth it and the stakes are the highest possible to man: the survival of reason.

My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists - and in a single choice: to live.

Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims.

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.

It's easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence--such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.

She knew that she could not have reached this white serenity except as the sum of all the colors, of all the violence she had known.