#ali

Man is an end in himself. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#life #objectivism #philosophy #success #life

Just that what happens today or next week or next year isn't necessarily the way things are always going to be. As soon as you settle into a routine, life throws you a curveball. Sometimes you hit it, sometimes you don't. ↗

— Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

#life

The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush. ↗

— Yann Martel

#morality #life

Societies would _not_ be better off if everyone were like Mr Spock, all rationality and no emotion. Instead, a balance - a teaming up of the internal rivals - is optimal for brains. ... Some balance of the emotional and rational systems is needed, and that balance may already be optimized by natural selection in human brains. ↗

— David Eagleman

#emotion #rationality #science #nature

The hour has arrived to abandon theories and go directly to what is practical. ↗

— Samael Aun Weor

#science

Here the contention is not just that the new Darwinian paradigm can help us realize whichever moral values we happen to choose. The claim is that the new paradigm can actually influence — legitimately — our choice of basic values in the first place. Some Darwinians insist that such influence can never be legitimate. What they have in mind is the naturalistic fallacy, whose past violation has so tainted their line of work. But what we're doing here doesn't violate the naturalistic fallacy. Quite the opposite. By studying nature — by seeing the origins of the retributive impulse — we see how we have been conned into committing the naturalistic fallacy without knowing it; we discover that the aura of divine truth surrounding retribution is nothing more than a tool with which nature — natural selection — gets us to uncritically accept its "values." Once this revelation hits norm, we are less likely to obey this aura, and thus less likely to commit the fallacy. ↗

— Robert Wright

#evolution #morality #nature

Do not believe in a thing because you have read about it in a book. Do not believe in a thing because another man has said it was true. Do not believe in words because they are hallowed by tradition. Find out the truth for yourself. Reason it out. That is realization. ↗

— Swami Vivekananda

#science #spirituality #science

His debtors always assumed he'd demand their firstborn. Like I'm fucking Rumpelstiltskin? What would Lothaire do with countless squalling babes? Raise them in a kennel? ↗

— Kresley Cole

#paranormal-romance #vampire #immortality

no scientific or medical study is valid unless and until a heavy metal assay has been completed on the subject(s). ↗

— Richard Diaz

#science #study #valid #science

In thinking about these questions I have been stimulated by criticisms of the prevailing scientific world picture... by the defenders of intelligent design. Even though writers like Michael Behe and Stephen C. Meyer are motivated at least in part by their religious beliefs, the empirical arguments they offer against the likelihood that the origin of life and its evolutionary history can be fully explained by physics and chemistry are of great interest in themselves. Another skeptic, David Berlinski, has brought out these problems vividly without reference to the design inference. Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair. ↗

— Thomas Nagel

#evolution #id #intelligent-design #macroevolution #materialism