think

You got to be careful of what comes and leave your mind and how often they do both. Whatever enters your mind has brought a new brand of you and whatever exits is going to manifest that brand.

Great battles that prevail in actions had been won or lost earlier in thoughts. When the mind resists change, it__ in vain the legs chase it!

A picture's worth a thousand words. But a single word can make you think of over a thousand pictures in your mind, over a thousand moments, a thousand memories.

Reason is your means of survival _ so that for you, who are a human being, the question __o be or not to be_ is the question 'to think or not to think..'.

Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires...Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform.

To think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call __uman nature,_ the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct.

By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man__very man__s an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.

Man__ life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose . If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man__or the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life.

Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies...It is only the concept of __ife_ that makes the concept of 'Value_ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.

Its remarkable the logic we build around a misapprehension.

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice _ and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man _ by choice; he has to hold his life as a value _ by choice; he has to learn to sustain it _ by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues _ by choice.A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

There is a morality of reason, a morality proper to man, and Man__ Life is its standard of value.All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil.

Man__ life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless brute, of a looting thug or a mooching mystic, but the life of a thinking being__ot life by means of force or fraud, but life by means of achievement__ot survival at any price, since there__ only one price that pays for man__ survival: reason.

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer__nd that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

Man__ mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action...To remain alive, he must think.

A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course of behavior. He needs a code of values to guide his actions. __alue_ is that which one acts to gain and keep, 'virtue_ is the action by which one gains and keeps it. __alue_ presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? 'Value_ presupposes a standard, a purpose and the necessity of action in the face of an alternative. Where there are no alternatives, no values are possible.

Through all the ages the mind has been regarded as evil, and every form of insult: from heretic to materialist to exploiter__very form of iniquity: from exile to disfranchisement to expropriation__very form of torture: from sneers to rack to firing squad__ave been brought down upon those who assumed the responsibility of looking at the world through the eyes of a living consciousness and performing the crucial act of a rational connection. Yet only to the extent to which__n chains, in dungeons, in hidden corners, in the cells of philosophers, in the shops of traders__ome men continued to think, only to that extent was humanity able to survive.

I treat my thoughts like an old person treats their valuables: I cannot for the life of me proceed to throwing them out.