Answer Quotes - page 84
The Passions and the Interests does not have the policy urgency that a contribution to public decisions may enjoy (as Hirschman's The Strategy of Economic Development eminently does), nor the compulsive immediacy that the exigencies of practical reason generate (as Exit, Voice, and Loyalty superbly portrayed). What then is so special about this book? [...] The answer lies not only in the recognition that Hirschman makes us see the ideological foundations of capitalism in a fresh way, but also in the remarkable fact that this freshness is derived from ideas that are more than two-hundred-years old. The basic hypothesis- the articulation and development of which Hirschman investigates-makes the case for capitalism rest on the belief that "it would activate some benign human proclivities at the expense of some malignant ones."
Amartya Sen
The adversary she found herself forced to fight was not worth matching or beating it was not a superior ability which she would have found honour in challenging it was ineptitude a grey spread of cotton that seemed soft and shapeless, that could offer no resistance to anything or anybody, yet managed to be a barrier in her way. She stood, disarmed, before the riddle of what made this possible, she could find no answer.
Ayn Rand
And questions give us no rest. We know not why our curse makes us seek we know not what, ever and ever. But we cannot resist it. It whispers to us that there are great things on this earth of ours, and that we can know them if we try, and that we must know them. We ask, why must we know, but it has no answer to give us. We must know that we may know.
Ayn Rand
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.
Ayn Rand
What for was the first question he asked about any activity proposed to him and nothing would make him act, if he found no valid answer. He flew through the days of his summer month like a rocket, but if one stopped him in mid-flight, he could always name the purpose of his every random moment. Two things were impossible to him to stand still or to move aimlessly.
Ayn Rand
You still love me - even if there's one expression of it that you will always feel and want, but will not give me no longer. I'm still what I was, and you'll always see it, and you'll always grant me the same response, even if there's a greater one that you grant another man. No matter what you feel for him, it will not change what you feel for me, and it won't treason to either, because it comes from the same root, it's the same payment in answer to the same values.
Ayn Rand
This is he.
This is the man they ate at the green table
Putting their gloves on ere they touched the meat.
This is the fruit of war, the fruit of peace,
The ripeness of invention, the new lamb,
The answer to the wisdom of the wise.
And still he hangs, and still he will not die
And still, on the steel city of our years
The light falls and the terrible blood streams down.
Stephen Vincent Benét
She said faintly, "Are you...real?”
Amusement showed in his face. "Real?” he said. "Define reality and I can answer you.” He waved a hand. "Look into solid earth, into rock, and see the galaxies of all Creation. What you call reality melts; there is a whirling, a spinning of forces, a dance of motes and atoms. Some of them we call planets, one of them is Earth. Nothingness within nothingness enclosing nothing, that is reality. Tell me what you want, and I can answer.”.
Keith Roberts
The past speaks to us in a thousand voices, warning and comforting, animating and stirring to action. What its great thinkers have thought and written on the deepest problems of life, shall we not hear and enjoy? The future calls upon us to prepare its way. Dare we fail to answer its solemn summons?
Felix Adler
The concept of ideographic writing is a most seductive notion. There is great appeal in the concept of written symbols conveying their message directly to our minds, thus bypassing the restrictive intermediary of speech. And it seems so plausible. Surely ideas immediately pop into our minds when we see a road sign, a death's head label on a bottle of medicine, a number on a clock. Aren't Chinese characters a sophisticated system of symbols that similarly convey meaning without regard to sound? Aren't they an ideographic system of writing? The answer to these questions is no. Chinese characters are a phonetic, not an ideographic, system of writing... Here I would go further: There never has been, and never can be, such a thing as an ideographic system of writing.
John DeFrancis
I do not find it surprising that the Jains, the Buddhists, and the Hindus have all taken seriously the lives of others. The ability to imagine ourselves into the minds and bodies of "others”-whether humans we term different from us (Down syndrome children; Alzheimer sufferers; the so-called mentally ill) or the animals we use for our food-is of central importance because the failure to do so is precisely what led to the horrors of Auschwitz. So, when people ask, Have you nothing more important to think about? the answer is: There is nothing more important to think about than the heart of empathy, which in the final analysis is nothing other than the ability to love. Becoming a vegan is simply one manifestation of that love.
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
