The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.
(..)
You who are worshippers of the zero - you have never discovered that achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death. Joy is not "the absence of pain", intelligence is not "the absence of stupidity", light is not "the absence of darkness", an entity is not "the absence of non-entity". Building is not done by abstaining from demolition (..). Existence is not a negation of negatives. Evil, not value, is an absence and a negation, evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us.
Perish, because we have learned that zero cannot hold a mortgage over life. You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. (..) Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death which we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.
//Ayn Rand, 1957, Atlas Shrugged
(..)
You who are worshippers of the zero - you have never discovered that achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death. Joy is not "the absence of pain", intelligence is not "the absence of stupidity", light is not "the absence of darkness", an entity is not "the absence of non-entity". Building is not done by abstaining from demolition (..). Existence is not a negation of negatives. Evil, not value, is an absence and a negation, evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us.
Perish, because we have learned that zero cannot hold a mortgage over life. You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. (..) Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death which we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.
//Ayn Rand, 1957, Atlas Shrugged
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