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Do you agree with this quote? (Long)?

What philosophical views do you hold? Please explain your conclusion rationally...

"Do not say that you’re afraid to trust your mind because you know so little. Are you safer in surrendering to mystics and discarding the little that you know? Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience-that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible-that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error. In place of your dream of an omniscient automaton, accept the fact that any knowledge man acquires is acquired by his own will and effort, and that that is his distinction in the universe, that is his nature, his morality, his glory.

Discard that unlimited license to evil which consists of claiming that man is imperfect. By what standard do you damn him when you claim it? Accept the fact that in the realm of morality nothing less than perfection will do. But perfection is not to be gauged by mystic commandments to practice the impossible, and your moral stature is not to be gauged by matters not open to your choice. Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality-not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute."

- Ayn Rand -

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  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    Ayn Rand should be canonized.

    Even in the face of your own ignorance, it is foolish to hand over control of your life, even to the brilliant, because there is no guarantee they have your interests at heart.

    And the sad truth is, not an especially good chance of actually being smarter either.

    "an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith"

    The Right to Vote should be based on having read & understood Ayn Rand.

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