Our Favorite Quotes

Rug's List:

If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater the effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders -- what would you tell him to do? To shrug.
-Francisco D'anconia, Atlas Shrugged

I swear -- by my life and my love of it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
-John Galt, Atlas Shrugged

That's what governments are for... (to) get in a man's way.
- Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly

I am a leaf in the wind - watch how I soar.
-Wash - the pilot, Firefly

No power in the 'verse can stop me now.
Also, I can kill you with my brain.
-River, Firefly

-The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.
Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister UK from 1979-1990

By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
John Maynard Keynes, British Economist (1883-1946)



Trisco's List:

"here's the deal: I'm the best there is, plain and simple. I mean, I wake up in the morning and I piss excellence. You know, nobody can hang with my stuff. I'm just a--just a big, hairy, American winning machine."
--Ricky Bobby

" If you can't take a little boody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. Its not safe out here. Its wonderous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But its not for the timid."
-Q

"How soon we forget history... Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. "

"It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company."
-George Washington

A government is a body of people; usually, notably, ungoverned.
-Shepherd Book from Firefly

"The wind will always wear away the stone, for the stone can only crumble; the wind can change."
-Spock

"to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee."
-Ahab

"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."
-V

"Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice."

"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate."

"Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance."

"What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals."

Plus just about anything else this guy every said.

-Thomas Jefferson

Apos' List

From Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead:

It is not advisable, James, to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener.

She was twelve years old when she told Eddie Willers that she would run the railroad when they grew up. She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. To hell with that, she thought---and never worried about it again.

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.

Show me your achievement - and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.

Others:

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly. - Albert Einstein

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. - Bertrand Russell

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen. - Jerome K Jerome