The only sovereign I can allow to rule me is reason.  The first law of reason is this: what exists, exists; what is, is.  From this irreducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built.  This is the foundation from which life is embraced.  Reason is a choice.  Wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discovering them.  Reason is our only way of grasping reality - it's our basic tool of survival.  We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see.

Well, you have a good start.  Admitting that you don't know something is the first step to learning....  Every day, I amaze myself with all I don't know.

A leader cannot follow behind people, tail between his legs, sniffing for their momentary whims and wishes, whining to follow them this way and that as they ramble through life.  Those kind of people are not looking for a leader - they are looking for a master, and one will find them.  A true leader forges a clear path through a moral wilderness so that people might see the way.

The truth of a situation most often turns out to be that one with the simplest explanation.

If an idea was sound, it had to have a life beyond a leader, or the leader had failed.

Honor is honesty to what is, not blind duty to what you wish to be.

...the first law of reason is that what exists, exists; what is, is, and that from this irreducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. He said that was the foundation from which life is embraced.

Wizard’s Sixth Rule: the only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason.

Life is precious.  That's why sacrifice for freedom is rational: it is for life itself and your ability to live it that you act, since life without freedom is the slow, sure death of self-sacrifice to the 'good' of mankind - who is always someone else.  Mankind is just a collection of individuals.  Why should everyone's life be more important, more precious, more valuable than yours?  Mindless mandatory self-sacrifice is insane.

'Profit' is a dirty word only to the leeches of the world.  They want it seen as evil, so they can more easily snatch what they did not earn.

His face might have been fresh, but his ideas were not; tyranny was ancient, even if Neal deluded himself in believing it the bright new salvation of mankind when applied by him and his fellows.

Good.  Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent.

Under the direction of the brothers, the collective of the Order, like any autocratic ruler, ultimately ruled only by the acquiesce of the people, who were controlled either by moral intimidation, or by physical threat, or by both.  Tyranny required constant tending, lest the illusion of righteous authority evaporate in the light of its grim toll, and the brutes be overpowered by the people who greatly outnumbered them.

She understood, now, why life had seemed so empty, so pointless: she herself had rendered it so in refusing to think.  Nicci had been a slave to everyone of need.  She had given her masters their only real weapon against her; she had surrendered to their twisted lies by putting the crippling chains of guilt around her own neck for them, giving herself freely into slavery to the whims and wishes of others instead of living her life as she should have - for herself.  She had never asked why it was right for her to be a slave to another’s desires, but not evil for them to enslave her.  She was not contributing to the betterment of mankind, but was merely a servant to countless puling little tyrants.  Evil was not one large entity, but a ceaseless torrent of small wrongs left unchallenged, until they festered into monsters.

We all have to die, Johnrock - every one of us. It is how we choose to live that matters. After all, it’s the only life each one of us will ever have, so how we live is of paramount importance.

One of the things that defines our character is how we handle our mistakes.

Does death invalidate life?  No, it defines it, and in so doing creates its value.

Still, every person had to make choices for themselves.  Those who lost sight of the values fought for and won in the past usually came to lose those values, leaving subsequent generations to have to fight to win them back, only for them to be squandered by their heirs, who didn’t have to face the struggle to gain them.

Everyone, to one extent or another, must face life’s trials. There will always be those who try to influence or even dominate us. We cannot allow such things to be an excuse for making the wrong choices. Ultimately, each of us lives our own life and we are responsible for it.

In a manner of speaking you hide behind women's skirts as you shoot arrows so that when arrows come back at you, you can feign outrage at an atrocity.

Mercy is a contingency plan devised by the guilty in the eventuality that they are caught.  Justice is the domain of the just.  This is about justice.

If you want to be a slave in life, then continue going around asking for others to do for you. They will oblige, but you will find the price is your choices, your freedom, your life itself. They will do for you, and as a result you will be in bondage to them forever, having given your identity away for a paltry price. Then, and only then, you will be a nobody, a slave, because you yourself and nobody else made it so.

You must find within yourself the ability to help yourself, the free will to accomplish what you must. Only in that way can you truly succeed in life.

The man I fear most is the one who preaches virtue and a better life while using people's good intentions to shade their eyes from the light of truth.

From what I've seen in life, a man who preaches a better way at the cost of the truth is a man who wants nothing more than for himself to be the master and you the slave.

Charity, if you have the means, is a personal choice, but charity which is expected or compelled is simply a polite word for slavery.

You don't have any idea what love really is. You can't love anyone or anything until you love your own existence, first. Love can only grow out of a respect for your own life. When you love yourself, your own existence, then you love someone who can enhance your existence, share it with you, and make it more pleasurable. When you hate yourself and believe your existence is evil, then you can only hate, you can only experience the shell of love, that longing for something good, but you have nothing to base it in but hatred. You taint the very concept of love, Sebastian, with your corrupted longing for it. You want me only to justify your hatred, to be your partner in self-loathing. To truly love someone, Sebastian, you must revel in their existence because they make life all the more wonderful. If you think existence is corrupt, then you are sealed off from the fruition of such a relationship, from what love really is.

Life is the future, not the past. The past can teach us, through experience, how to accomplish things in the future, comfort us with cherished memories, and provide the foundation of what has already been accomplished. But only the future holds life. To live in the past is to embrace what is dead. To live life to its fullest, each day must be created anew. As rational, thinking beings, we must use our intellect, not a blind devotion to what has come before, to make rational choices.

Those who are far from insane often act in an irrational manner.  Don't excuse such conscious and deliberate actions with so convenient an explanation as insanity.

Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one's self.

After all, I don't need to threaten you to get you to see that the water in that fountain is wet or that the walls of this room are constructed from stone, but the Order must threaten people to make them believe that an eternity of being dead will be an eternal delight, but only if they do as they're told in this life.

People who hate don't usually recognize that vile taint within themselves.  They spew their hatred as righteous.  That corruption is what makes them so evil - and so dangerous.  They are able to do the most despicable things and think themselves heroes for having done them.

If you think you're a slave, then you are a slave...