“The reason that Harry Potter can withstand Voldemort is that he's got a piece of him. He's been touched by it. The way you keep psychopaths at bay is to develop the inner psychopath so you know one when you see one. That's a voluntary thing, a set of tools you have at your disposal, which is a full…”Tagged: Knowledge, No More Naivete, Literary References, Harry Potter, Voldemort
“To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting…”Tagged: posture, Chaos, Sacrifice, Pleasing God, Superstition
“Intolerance of others’ views (no matter how ignorant or incoherent they may be) is not simply wrong; in a world where there is no right or wrong, it is worse: it is a sign you are embarrassingly unsophisticated or, possibly, dangerous.”Tagged: intolerance, Ideological Intolerance, dangerous, Unsophisticated
“You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act. You simply don’t know what you believe, before that. You are too complex to understand yourself.”Tagged: Belief, Self-knowledge
“It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order. If you're going to insist on bending the world to your way, you better have your reasons.”Tagged: Tradition, Gratitude
“In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition, religion, and even nation-centered cultures, partly to decrease the danger of group conflict. But we are increasingly falling prey to the desperation of meaninglessness, and that is no improvement at all.”Tagged: West, Tradition, Religion, Desperation, Meaninglessness
“I've always thought that if people really noticed what I was teaching there would be Hell to pay.”Tagged: Writers
“There is very little difference between the capacity for mayhem and destruction, integrated, and strength of character. This is one of the most difficult lessons of life.”Tagged: Apollo Vs. Dionysus, Creative Destruction, Creating Chaos, Chaos, Creating Order From Disorder
“Speak your mind. Put your desires forward, as if you had a right to them— at least the same right as others. Walk tall and gaze forthrightly ahead. Dare to be dangerous.”Tagged: Inspirational, Words of Wisdom, Speak Up, stand tall
“Without rules we quickly become slaves to our passions— and there’s nothing freeing about that.”Tagged: Freedom Within Restraint, Rules As An Organizing Force, How To Be Free, Freedom Within Laws
“To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting…”Tagged: stand tall, Theology
“The foremost rule is that you must take responsibility for your own life. Period.”Tagged: Taking Responsibility, Self-Help, Life, Living
“People have, like, three—well, there are four fundamental fears. One is fear of their own inadequacy and malevolence. Now, that’s a big fear, man. That can really, that can really do you in if you confront it accidentally and fully. Happens to soldiers sometimes in battle when they find themselves…”Tagged: Fundamental Fears, Fear, Anxiety
“It’s a catastrophe. It means that we learn half the lesson. We sort of learned half the lesson of the 20th century, right? And thank God we sort of learned half the lesson. But the other half has not been learned, and that’s not acceptable, not in the least. The data in the United States indicates…”Tagged: World War II, Communism, Marxist
“The intellectuals, roughly speaking, have been complicit in failure to define the excesses of the left.”Tagged: Intellectuals, Intelligentsia, Leftist Extremism
“There is no phenomena in social sciences, period, that is on firmer statistical and conceptual footing than IQ. There’s no phenomena that’s more robust. If you give people a set of tests that assess abstraction, and then you measure their average score on the set of tests of abstraction, and then…”Tagged: IQ, IQ and Race, The Bell Curve, problematic
“The problem with IQ tests is that they do produce group differences, and that’s unbelievably complicated and horrible. It’s complicated because it isn’t obvious how you should group people, if you’re going to do group analysis of IQ. For example, there’s more genetic diversity among Africans than…”Tagged: IQ, IQ and Race, The Bell Curve, problematic
“Well, I think it’s very easy for people, who don’t want to evaluate their own beliefs, to assume that everything the other side is saying is a consequence of their personal moral failings, and their ignorance, and their malevolence, basically. It’s not helpful. I particularly think it’s unhelpful in…”Tagged: accountability, Responsibilities, Left/Right
“I don’t know. The thing is, there’s a lot of noise in the press, especially as you move towards the radical left, about the alt-right. But I have a hard time putting my finger on who, exactly, these alt-right people are. If you look at the radical left, it’s obvious that they have a stranglehold, I…”Tagged: Alt-Right, Radical Left