"Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason
and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person's sexual choice
is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person
finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life.
Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of
themselves. No matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of
selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they
cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment - just try to think of
performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! - an act which is not possible
in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being
desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand
naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their
standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects
their deepest vision of themselves, the person whose surrender permits them to
experience - or to fake - a sense of self-esteem .. Love is our response to our
highest values - and can be nothing else."
"People think that a liar gains a victory over his
victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because
one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person
one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality
that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the
world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest
of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all."
"A man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his
fundamental convictions.... He will always be attracted to the woman who
reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him
to experience a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own
value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires,
the strongest, the hardest to conquer--because only the possession of a heroine
will give him the sense of an achievement."
"I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but
I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the
moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the
unanswered in my life."
"In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of
anyone to anyone... Men exchange their work by free, mutual consent to mutual
advantage when their personal interests agree and they both desire the
exchange. If they do not desire it, they are not forced to deal with each
other. They seek further. This is the only possible form of relationship
between equals. Anything else is a relation of slave to master, or victim to
executioner."
"Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the
ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to
others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational
self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral
purpose of his life."
"This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to
guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before...The fortune of my spirit is
not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor
of spirit."
"I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves
nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love
and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we
wish, or walk alone when we so desire."
x
