“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.”

“A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal that is worth achieving.”

“Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.”

“Only the man who extols the purity of love devoid of desire, is capable of the depravity of a desire devoid of love.”

“A wish for the irrational is not to be achieved, whether the sacrificial victims are willing or not. But men will not cease to desire the impossible and will not lose their longing to destroy--so long as self-destruction and self-sacrifice are preached to them as the practical means of achieving happiness of the recipients.”

“Every form of happiness if one, every desire is driven by the same motor--by our love for a single value, for the highest potentiality of our own existence--and every achievement is an expression of it.”

“Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. Are you prattling about an instinct of self-preservation? An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An 'instinct' in as unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man's desire to live is not automatic: your secret evil today is that that is the desire you do not hold. Your fear of death is not a love of life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer--and that is the way he has acted through most of history.”