"The Survival of the Left" https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/0908/6005128a.html, Forbes (Sep 8, 1997)
1980s–1990s
“Where in the world did the idea come from that things left to themselves can improve with time? Who would start a crazy idea like that? This idea is the opposite of everything that we observe in the world today. For instance, all the highways in our nation today left to themselves decay, deteriorate, and fall apart. A house left to itself will become a wreck. It takes work and constant planning to make anything improve. Everything tends toward disorder.”
Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)
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Kent Hovind 236
American young Earth creationist 1953Related quotes
Book 3, Chapter 1 “General O. T. Shaw” (p. 92)
Oswald Bastable, The Warlord of the Air (1971)
De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: A god is the idea of a god. The idea of a god is a god. The idea of Glycon is Glycon, if I can enhance that idea with an anaconda and a speaking tube, fair enough. I am unlikely to start believing that this glove puppet created the universe. It’s a fiction, all gods are fiction. It’s just that I happen to think that fiction’s real. Or that it has its own reality, that is just as valid as ours. I happen to believe that most of the important things in the material world start out as fiction. That everything around us was once fiction – before there was the table there was the idea of a table, and the idea of a table before tables was fiction. This is the most important world, the world of fictional things. That’s the world where all this starts.
Source: Social Problems (1883), Ch. 21 : Conclusion
Context: The great work of the present for every man, and every organization of men, who would improve social conditions, is the work of education — the propagation of ideas. It is only as it aids this that anything else can avail. And in this work every one who can think may aid — first by forming clear ideas himself, and then by endeavoring to arouse the thought of those with whom he comes in contact.
Other
The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993)
Rand, Ayn (2005). Mayhew, Robert, ed. Ayn Rand Answers, the Best of Her Q&A. New York: New American Library. p. 73. (1976)