Money is the Root of All Good

I was reading Atlas Shrugged this past week. It is a long and difficult journey through the book. But every second of reading it was worth it. When I finished, I was exalted.

I am posting an edited excerpt from the book. This was being said by Francisco de Anconia, one of the books' heroes ; addressing a general gathering but directing it towards Hank Rearden.

"So you think that money is the root of all evil? "Have you ever asked what is the root of money?
Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is made possible only by the men who produce.
When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.' To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods.
Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find.
But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires.
Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him.
If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it.

Alarm Clock!!

I admit I have been sleeping. I knew I had been sleeping.
Its so easy to sleep than to be awake in this age and time. My country is sleeping. I see it everyday in the news, I hear it from the people. The country I right now live in, which conjures up the fallacy that to be a woman is a sin let alone let"allow" her to vote or drive a car. The pain is too much. And hence, its easier to not think. To not struggle.
To just watch that episode of 'Desperate Housewives' or watch some neurons-killing Indian film. To not just escape but to stay there. To just be still.
But isn't that what means death?To not think is to not exist. To not want, is to not live.
and I choose to live.[Image]
We have lost many of our virtues. The first one ....thought; the other reason and another laziness. Reason without thought is stupidity. It is senseless, baseless _ a fallacy, an acceptance of darkness...saying yes to a void.If we act on something without reason, without thought, it holds no value. Because it was acted without reason...without spirit...without TRUTH.The contradiction to reason is foolishness, laziness, cowardice and all that is vice.
The question here is even when we know the truth and gain the wisdom of reason... we lack to act. The lack of action is an action unto itself_ its an inaction.When we decide that we are going to act upon inaction, we are making a noose for our own self; making a wreath for our own funeral. I will not fashion some frivolous speech or pump you with Red Bull. Just this that :
Think, Reason, Pursue and Triumph!