Quotes from Leonard Peikoff

Vice, in the Objectivist view, is not a rewarding policy; it is unconsciousness-willful, self-induced unconsciousness, while one continues to move around and function. To a conscious organism no course of behavior can be more dangerous.

Philosophy. A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation—or let your subconscious accumulate

When the leading voices of the emotionalist Republic championed "feeling," it was not as a source of knowledge or of human happiness, but of freedom: the freedom from objectivity, method, logic, fact. It was feeling not as an alleged means to truth, but as the nullification of thought.

Nihilism" in this context means hatred, the hatred of values and of their root, reason. Hatred is not the same as disapproval, contempt, or anger. Hatred is loathing combined with fear, and with the desire to lash out at the hated object, to wound, to disfigure, to destroy it.

They agree that the chosen have "absolute right" to smash the rest of mankind. They agree that might, being the expression of destiny, makes right.

In an objective approach, force and value are opposites. The goal of a proper society, accordingly, is not to compel truth or virtue (which would be a contradiction in terms), but to make them possible—by ensuring that men are left free.

The standard by which ideas are to be judged, Hitler says repeatedly, is not "abstract" considerations of logic or fidelity to fact. The standard is: usefulness to the Volk.

There is no such thing as truth," explains Hitler, "either in the moral or in the scientific sense." Or as Goebbels puts the point: "Important is not what is right but what wins.

I tell you," declared Goering, dismissing a criticism of Hitler's economic policies, "if the Fuhrer wishes it then two times two are five."24

In later years, the creators of "Weimar culture," the ones who survived, cursed the German people for not having listened to them. The tragedy is that the people had listened.

Thus three elements unite to define the Objectivist concept of reason: perception,† conception, and logic.

The "floater" misses reality; the concrete-bound person misses understanding.

Every central doctrine of the Nazi politics, racism included, is an expression or variant of the theory of collectivism. Such doctrines cannot rise to the ascendancy, neither among the intellectuals nor in the mind of the public, except in a culture already saturated with a mystical-collectivist philosophy. In the case of Germany, this means: saturated with the ideas of Hegel.

the first requirement of expanding his knowledge is induction, which is in essence the process of inferring a generalization from observations.

This is the Nazi doctrine (also adapted from the Marxists) of polylogism.

A necessary complement to induction is deduction, the standard example of which is: "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal." The

Observe in this connection that the Nazis, correctly, regarded the power of propaganda as an indispensable tool.

Knowledge is a hierarchy; it consists of integrations, each level making the next possible and in due course necessary. Thinking, we can say, consists of integrating integrations.

The first thing to say about that which is is simply: it is. As Parmenides in ancient Greece formulated the principle: what is, is. Or, in Ayn Rand's words: existence exists.

Human knowledge is not a mere collection, but a structure; it is a single body of interrelated cognitions.

By virtue of being able directly to discriminate one aspect of reality, a consciousness cannot discriminate some other aspect that would require a different kind of sense organs. Whatever facts the senses do register, however, are facts. And these facts are what lead a mind eventually to the rest of its knowledge.

Qua dogmatist, the Nazi holds faith to be superior to logic. Qua activist, he dismisses logic in favor of action. Qua pragmatist, he is free to endorse contradictions, provided they "work." Qua relativist, he rejects the absolutism of the Law of Identity. And, qua subjectivist, the Nazi simply wipes out logic by giving its name to his random, "Aryan" feelings.

Man, Aristotle held, must first grasp the appropriate facts of reality; on this basis, he can then set the goals and course of his action. Pragmatism represents a total reversal of this progression. For the pragmatist, the order is: man acts; he invents forms of thought to satisfy the needs of his action; reality adapts itself accordingly (except when, inexplicably, it resists). First, action—second, thought—third, reality.

Advocates of self-sacrifice hold that a man's primary obligation is to serve some entity outside of himself.