Quote of the Day: Ideas matter!

"There is a fundamental conviction... that ideas matter. In one’s youth that conviction is radiated as self-evident truth. That ideas matter means that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that one’s mind matters. And the radiance of that certainty, in the process of growing up, is the best aspect of youth.
   “Its consequence is the inability to believe in the power or the triumph of evil. No matter what corruption one observes in one’s immediate background, one is unable to accept it as normal, permanent or metaphysically right. One feels: ‘This injustice (or terror or falsehood or frustration or pain or agony) is the exception in life, not the rule.’ One feels certain that somewhere on earth—even if not anywhere in one’s surroundings or within one’s reach—a proper, human way of life is possible to human beings, and justice matters. And if justice matters, then one fights for it: one speaks out—in the unnamed certainty that someone will understand… .
    “The dedication to ideas leads, in practice, to an almost involuntary goodwill toward men —or rather to something deeper and more important, which is the root of goodwill: respect. It leads to the attitude, in individual encounters, of treating men as rational beings, on the unstated premise that a man is innocent until proved guilty, that he is not evil until he has proved himself to be; ‘evil,’ in terms of this attitude, means closed to the power of ideas, i.e., of reason."
- Ayn Rand, from her article ‘The Inexplicable Personal Alchemy’

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