pursuit-of-happiness

A rational process is a moral process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest - but if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.

The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.

Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders_ attempt to evade the fact that A is A. All the secret evil you dread to face within you and all the pain you have ever endured, came from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A.

To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes.

Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.

Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say __t is,_ you are refusing to say __ am._ By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: __ho am I to know?_- he is declaring: __ho am I to live?

Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive in any random manner, but will perish unless he lives as his nature requires, so he is free to seek his happiness in any mindless fraud, but the torture of frustration is all he will find, unless he seeks the happiness proper to man. The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

Reality is that which exists; the unreal does not exist; the unreal is merely that negation of existence which is the content of a human consciousness when it attempts to abandon reason. Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man__ only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.

That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call __ree will_ is your mind__ freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.

No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it. It is only with your own knowledge that you can deal. It is only your own knowledge that you can claim to possess or ask others to consider. Your mind is your only judge of truth__nd if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal. Nothing but a man__ mind can perform that complex, delicate, crucial process of identification which is thinking. Nothing can direct the process but his own judgment. Nothing can direct his judgment but his moral integrity.

To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.

Sweep aside those hatred-eaten mystics, who pose as friends of humanity and preach that the highest virtue man can practice is to hold his own life as of no value. Do they tell you that the purpose of morality is to curb man__ instinct of self-preservation? It is for the purpose of self-preservation that man needs a code of morality. The only man who desires to be moral is the man who desires to live.

A process of reason is a process of constant choice in answer to the question: True or False? - Right or Wrong?

Thinking is man__ only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one__ consciousness, the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment - on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict __t is.

Meditate upon yourself and you'll find bliss.

Do not pursue a life that looks good. Pursue a life that is good.

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking__hat the mind is one__ only judge of values and one__ only guide of action__hat reason is an absolute that permits no compromise__hat a concession to the irrational invalidates one__ consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality__hat the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind__hat the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one__ consciousness.

Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it__hat no substitute can do your thinking__hat the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.