Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't letthe noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice. If the abdicates his Power, he abdicates the status of man, and the grinding chaos of the irrational is what he achieves as his sphere of existence - by his own choice.
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand is my favorite thinker; She was a provocative and visionary writer. I believe She was the smartest woman in America (1905- 1982). Even though she claimed to be an atheist, but she was more spiritual than many "religious" people I have seen. She believed in power of human beings and power of the mind. She is best known for developing Objectivism, and her support of laissez-faire capitalism. Her political views were strongly individualist which I love. If you want to know her, read Atlas Shrugged and you will be transformed. I have to thank my dear Rev. Tom to introduce me to her.
Did you know that there were some 68,000 charity foundations in the U.S. in 2005, controlling assets in the range of $500 billion and making some $34 billion in annual grants? I came across a book called The foundation where it talks about the ineffectiveness of these charity group. The author writes how big grants are being signed off without ever asking anyone- grantees or members of their own staff- precisely how a given program or grant is supposed to achieve its goal and without measuring, later , whether it has succeeded. wow! $34 billion is a lot of money. To put it in perspective,the regular budget of the UN is some $1.3 billion per year, and the administrative budget of the 15-country European Community amounts to some 4.5 billion.
