{"quotes":[{"text":"We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.","author":"Ayn Rand","tags":["guilt","intellect","life","pursuit-of-happiness","rewards","work"],"id":9063,"author_id":"Ayn+Rand"},{"text":"Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies...It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of 'Value’ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.","author":"Ayn Rand","tags":["atlas-shrugged","evil","good","john-galt","life","man","mind","morality","morals","objectivism","philosophy","pursuit-of-happiness","reason","think","thinking","values","virtue"],"id":24621,"author_id":"Ayn+Rand"},{"text":"The question of the purpose of human life has been raised countless times; it has never yet received a satisfactory answer and perhaps does not admit of one. Some of those who have asked it have added that if it should turn out that life has no purpose, it would lose all value for them. But this threat alters nothing. It looks, on the contrary, as though one had a right to dismiss the question, for it seems to derive from the human presumptuousness, many other manifestations of which are already familiar to us. Nobody talks about the purpose of the life of animals, unless, perhaps, it may be supposed to lie in being of service to man. But this view is not tenable either, for there are many animals of which man can make nothing, except to describe, classify and study them; and innumerable species of animals have escaped even this use, since they existed and became extinct before man set eyes on them.","author":"Sigmund Freud","tags":["freud","freudian","happiness","purpose-of-life","pursuit-of-happiness","on-happiness","on-purpose-of-human-life","sigmund-freud"],"id":26127,"author_id":"Sigmund+Freud"},{"text":"We have created a manic world nauseous with the pursuit of material wealth. Many also bear their cross of imagined deprivation, while their fellow human beings remain paralyzed by real poverty. We drown in the thick sweetness of our sensual excess, and our shameless opulence, while our discontent souls suffocate in the arid wasteland of spiritual deprivation.","author":"Anthon St. Maarten","tags":["buying","consumer-culture","consumerism","consumption","deprivation","desert","despair","emptiness","excess","happiness","happiness-fulfillment-desire","material-possessions","material-world","materialism","materialism-versus-spiritualism","materialistic","materialistic-society","meaning-of-life","meaning-of-things","meaninglessness","modern-life","modern-society","money-happiness","money-not-happiness","nausea","nihilism","nihilistic","opulence","poverty","pursuit-of-happiness","self-inflicted-pain","soul-searching","soulless","spending","spiritual-development","spiritual-growth","spiritual-life","spiritual-wisdom","spirituality","suffocate","wastefulness","wasteland","wealth","wealth-and-virtues","wealth-of-soul"],"id":31931,"author_id":"Anthon+St.+Maarten"},{"text":"Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it—that no substitute can do your thinking—that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.","author":"Ayn Rand","tags":["atlas-shrugged","evil","good","happiness","independence","john-galt","life","man","mind","morality","morals","objectivism","pain","philosophy","pursuit-of-happiness","rational","reason","think","thinking","truth","values","virtue","wisdom"],"id":54317,"author_id":"Ayn+Rand"},{"text":"Meditate upon yourself and you'll find bliss.","author":"Abhijit Naskar","tags":["bliss","bliss","brainy","inspirational","mind","mind-power","philosophy","pursuit-of-happiness","self","self-awareness","self-realization"],"id":57564,"author_id":"Abhijit+Naskar"},{"text":"Let people be the pursuits of happiness, you be the pursuit of perfection.","author":"Amit Kalantri","tags":["happiness","happy","human","humans","inspiration","inspirational","inspirational","motivation","motivational","motivational","people","perfect","perfection","perfectionist","philosophy","pursue","pursuit","pursuit-of-happiness","pursuit-of-happyness","pursuits","wisdom","wisdom"],"id":79099,"author_id":"Amit+Kalantri"},{"text":"I had a dream that I would be successful and happy in life…I woke up running out of breath, because I’ve been chasing this dream for quite a while now.","author":"Starley Ard","tags":["chasing","dreaming","dreams","happiness","pursuit-of-happiness","success","successful","work-ethic"],"id":84240,"author_id":"Starley+Ard"},{"text":"Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive in any random manner, but will perish unless he lives as his nature requires, so he is free to seek his happiness in any mindless fraud, but the torture of frustration is all he will find, unless he seeks the happiness proper to man. The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.","author":"Ayn Rand","tags":["atlas-shrugged","evil","good","happiness","john-galt","life","man","mind","morality","morals","objectivism","philosophy","pursuit-of-happiness","rational","reason","think","thinking","values","virtue"],"id":94853,"author_id":"Ayn+Rand"},{"text":"We will therefore turn to the less ambitious question of what men themselves show by their behavior to be the purpose and intention of their lives. What do they demand of life and wish to achieve in it? The answer to this can hardly be in doubt. They strive for happiness; they want to become happy and to remain so. This endeavor has two sides, a positive and a negative aim. It aims, on the one hand, at an absence of pain and unpleasure, and, on the other, at the experiencing of strong feelings of pleasure. In its narrower sense the word 'happiness' only relates to the last. In conformity with this dichotomy in his aims, man's activity develops in two directions, according as it seeks to realize — in the main, or even exclusively — the one or the other of these aims.","author":"Sigmund Freud","tags":["freud","freudian","happiness","happiness-in-life","life","philosophical","philosophy","pursuit-of-happiness","sigmund-freud"],"id":102924,"author_id":"Sigmund+Freud"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":75,"pages":8,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}