Leonard Peikoff Quotes

Logic, order, truth, reason, we consign them all to the oblivion of death," said one Surrealist manifesto. We must "cultivate the hatred of intelligence," said the leader of the Futurists, Filippo Marinetti, an artist hailed by Mussolini as the John the Baptist of Fascism.17

To send a child to rot in the prison of Cuba for the alleged sake of his own well-being is criminal hypocrisy.

The deepest roots of this modern shift are twofold: in epistemology, the romanticist advocacy of feeling as superior to reason; in ethics, the altruist advocacy of others as superior to self. The result is a view of morality in which the ruling standard is: the feelings of others.

The worse the coming future, the more it should motivate its opponents.

Unlike the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation's economy. The issue of legal ownership is secondary; what counts is the issue of control. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property-so long as the state res ... erves to itself the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property.

Ayn Rand held that art is a 're-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgements.' By its nature, therefore, a novel (like a statue or a symphony) does not require or tolerate an explanatory preface; it is a self-contained universe, aloof from commentary, beckoning the reader to enter, perceive, respond.

The unphilosophical majority among men are the ones most helplessly dependent on their era's dominant ideas.

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

The Nazis take the skeleton in the closet of centuries and rattle it boastfully. Force, they declare, will always be necessary, since it is in the nature of human life (which is true, if one accepts their concept of human life).

Principles make it simple.

[There is] a widespread approach to ideas which Objectivism repudiates altogether: agnosticism. I mean this term in a sense which applies to the question of God, but to many other issues also, such as extra-sensory perception or the claim that the stars influence man's destiny. In regard to all such claims, the agnostic is the type who says, "I can't prove these claims are true, but you can't prove they are false, so the only proper conclusion is: I don't know; no one knows; no one can know one way or the other."

The agnostic viewpoint poses as fair, impartial, and balanced. See how many fallacies you can find in it. Here are a few obvious ones: First, the agnostic allows the arbitrary into the realm of human cognition. He treats arbitrary claims as ideas proper to consider, discuss, evaluate - and then he regretfully says, "I don't know," instead of dismissing the arbitrary out of hand. Second, the onus-of-proof issue: the agnostic demands proof of a negative in a context where there is no evidence for the positive. "It's up to you," he says, "to prove that the fourth moon of Jupiter did not cause your sex life and that it was not a result of your previous incarnation as the Pharaoh of Egypt." Third, the agnostic says, "Maybe these things will one day be proved." In other words, he asserts possibilities or hypotheses with no jot of evidential basis.

The agnostic miscalculates. He thinks he is avoiding any position that will antagonize anybody. In fact,

Now, the United States' response, the western response to this is a continuation of the appeasement that was started back in the '50s with Eisenhower when Iran seized western oil companies. The Americans, the British, and the Israelis, as I remember, launched an attack to try to reclaim it and - or at least the British and the Israelis did and Eisenhower vetoed it.

When you get up in front of a group of people, you make a contract with them; you promise them, "I am going to deliver value X." Every once in a while, you have to say, "See, I remember; I am keeping my promise.

The more you learn, if you learn it properly, the more clear you become and the more you know.

Statism and the advocacy of reason are philosophical opposites. They cannot coexist - neither in a philosophic system nor in a nation.

Socialism" for the Nazis denotes the principle of collectivism as such and its corollary, statism - in every field of human action, including but not limited to economics. "To be a socialist," says Goebbels, "is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole."9

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.

What one needs to know in order to appraise a man morally is not: what did his mother say or do when he was three? The proper question is: what does he say and do now?