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Leonard Peikoff QUOTES

Leonard Peikoff QUOTES

1 " Every argument for God and every attribute ascribed to Him rests on a false metaphysical premise. None can survive for a moment on a correct metaphysics....

Existence exists, and only existence exists. Existence is a primary: it is uncreated, indestructible, eternal. So if you are to postulate something beyond existence—some supernatural realm—you must do it by openly denying reason, dispensing with definitions, proofs, arguments, and saying flatly, “To Hell with argument, I have faith.” That, of course, is a willful rejection of reason.

Objectivism advocates reason as man’s sole means of knowledge, and therefore, for the reasons I have already given, it is atheist. It denies any supernatural dimension presented as a contradiction of nature, of existence. This applies not only to God, but also to every variant of the supernatural ever advocated or to be advocated. In other words, we accept reality, and that’s all. "

― Leonard Peikoff , Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

2 " The artist is the closest man comes to being God. "

― Leonard Peikoff , Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

3 " An individual can be hurt in countless ways by other men's irrationality, dishonesty, injustice. Above all, he can be disappointed, perhaps grievously, by the vices of a person he had once trusted or loved. But as long as his property is not expropriated and he remains unmolested physically, the damage he sustains is essentially spiritual, not physical; in such a case, the victim alone has the power and the responsibility of healing his wounds. He remains free: free to think, to learn from his experiences, to look elsewhere for human relationships; he remains free to start afresh and to pursue his happiness. "

― Leonard Peikoff , Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

4 " The man who waits for reality to write the truth inside his soul waits in vain. "

― Leonard Peikoff , Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

5 " In any compromise between food and poison,” Ayn Rand writes, “it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. "

― Leonard Peikoff , Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

6 " Collectivism is the theory that the group (the collective) has primacy over the individual. Collectivism holds that, in human affairs, the collective—society, the community, the nation, the proletariat, the race, etc.—is the unit of reality and the standard of value. "

― Leonard Peikoff , The Cause of Hitler's Germany

7 " The mental practice that underlies the anti-effort attitude is the act of evasion, of blanking out some fact of reality which one dislikes. This act constitutes the essence of irrationality and, therefore, of evil. Evasion is the Objectivist equivalent of a mortal sin. It is the only such sin that we recognize, because it is what makes possible every other form of moral corruption. 27 "

― Leonard Peikoff , Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

8 " The victim’s submission to utter senselessness becomes the defeat of sense. His obeisance to absurdity becomes the refutation of logic. "

― Leonard Peikoff , The Cause of Hitler's Germany

9 " Man, Aristotle held, must first grasp the appropriate facts of reality; on this basis, he can then set the goals and course of his action. Pragmatism represents a total reversal of this progression. For the pragmatist, the order is: man acts; he invents forms of thought to satisfy the needs of his action; reality adapts itself accordingly (except when, inexplicably, it resists). First, action—second, thought—third, reality. "

― Leonard Peikoff , The Ominous Parallels

10 " The principles of morality are a product not of feeling, but of cognition. "

― Leonard Peikoff , Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

11 " The rational (the good) has nothing to gain from the irrational (the evil),” observes Ayn Rand, “except a share of its failures and crimes. . . .”17 "

― Leonard Peikoff , Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

12 " Ayn Rand defines “value” as “that which one acts to gain and/or keep.”3 “Value” denotes the object of an action: it is that which some entity’s action is directed to acquiring or preserving "

― Leonard Peikoff , Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

13 " The Germans, therefore, practiced them. In order not to be eaten alive by the next round of legislation, virtually everyone joined or identified himself with a group (since an isolated individual had no chance against large, vocal blocs). And every group knew only one policy: to demand new economic benefits from the government and/or new legislative sanctions against the other groups. "

― Leonard Peikoff , The Cause of Hitler's Germany

14 " The fundamental goal of education, writes Dewey, ”is the development of a spirit of social co-operation and community life....“ The goal is to foster the child’s ”social capacity“—by, among other things, ”saturating him with the spirit of service....“21 "

― Leonard Peikoff , The Ominous Parallels

15 " In a primacy-of-consciousness philosophy, virtue consists of allegiance to the ruling consciousness, such as God or society. In Ayn Rand’s philosophy, virtue consists of allegiance to existence; it consists of a man’s recognizing facts and then acting accordingly. "

― Leonard Peikoff , Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

16 " The voters were aware of the Nazi ideology. Nazi literature, including statements of the Nazi plans for the future, papered the country during the last years of the Weimar Republic. Mein Kampf alone sold more than 200,000 copies between 1925 and 1932. The essence of the political system which Hitler intended to establish in Germany was clear. "

― Leonard Peikoff , The Cause of Hitler's Germany

17 " The best-known version of this view, the Existentialism of the fifties and sixties, held that reality is absurd and that irrational passion is the only means of knowledge. "

― Leonard Peikoff , The Ominous Parallels

18 " Racial subjectivism holds that a man’s inborn racial constitution determines his mental processes, his intellectual outlook, his thought patterns, his feelings, his conclusions—and that these conclusions, however well established, are valid only for members of a given race, who share the same underlying constitution. "

― Leonard Peikoff , The Ominous Parallels

19 " Evil, for Objectivism, means the willful ignorance or defiance of reality. This has to mean: that which cannot deal with reality, that which is whim-ridden, context-dropping, self-contradictory. Evil is consistent in only one regard: its essence is consistently at war with all the values and virtues human life requires. "

― Leonard Peikoff , Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

20 " A philosophy of education, in short, is essential to being a proper parent; otherwise, you are merely turning your child over to blind chance. "

― Leonard Peikoff , Teaching Johnny to Think: A Philosophy of Education Based on the Principles of Ayn Rand's Objectivism