“Truth has advocates who seek understanding," Richard said. "Corrupt ideas have miserable little fanatics who attempt to enforce their beliefs through intimidation and brutality... through faith. Savage force is faith's obedient servant. Violence on an apocalyptic scale can only be born of faith because reason, by its very nature, disarms senseless cruelty. Only faith thinks to justify it.”

“Faith and feelings are the warm marrow of evil. Unlike reason, faith and feelings provide no boundary to limit any delusion, any whim. They are virulent poison, giving the numbing illusion of moral sanction to every depravity ever hatched.Faith and feelings are the darkness to reason’s light.Reason is the very substance of truth itself. The glory that is life is wholly embraced through reason. In rejecting it, in rejecting reason, one embraces death.”

“But emotions when based on valued things can be a faithful and consistant sum of truths.”

“Celebrating faith over reason is merely a way of denying what is, in favor of embracing any whim that strikes your fancy.”

“There were those who loved liberty, who cried out to live their own lives, to strive, to rise above, to achieve, and those bent on the mindless equality of stagnation brought about through the enforcement of an artificial, arbitrary, gray uniformity--those who wanted to transcend through their own effort, and those who wanted others to think for them and were willing to pay the ultimate price.”

“You don't love me, Sebastian. You don't have any idea what love really is. You can't love anyone or anything until you love your own existence, first. Love can only grow out of a respect for your own life. When you love yourself, your own existence, then you love someone who can enhance your existence, share it with you, and make it more pleasurable. When you hate yourself and believe your existence is evil, then you can only hate, you can only experience the shell of love, that longing for something good, but you have nothing to base it in but hatred. You taint the very concept of love, Sebastian, with your corrupted longing for it. You want me only to justify your hatred, to be your partner in self-loathing.”

“The first law of reason is that what exists, exists; what is, is, and that from this ineducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built...that is the foundation from which life is embraced... thinking is a choice...wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discover them... reason is our only way of grasping reality--it's our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking--to reject reason--but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see... Reason is the very substance of truth itself. The glory that is life is wholly embraced through reason. In rejecting reason one embraces death.”