Quotes by Andrew Bernstein

“A hero has faced it all: he need not be undefeated, but he must be undaunted.”

“The hero is valorous because he stands up to every threat directed against his values. Heroism requires value conflict.”

“First, he must hold rational values, and to do this he must be a thinker.”

“A hero holds purposes appropriate to man and is, therefore, a thinker.”

“The deadline for compliance with very costly internal control reporting regulations is next year and I think lot of companies are evaluating how to avoid the costs.”

“Our group is trying to convince the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) to make its deregistration rules more flexible.”

“The SEC has made a good-faith effort to solve the problem, but unfortunately [the proposals] cannot be used by enough companies in Europe.”

Here is the tragedy of theology in its distilled essence: The employment of high-powered human intellect, of genius, of profoundly rigorous logical deduction—studying nothing. In the Middle Ages, the great minds capable of transforming the world did not study the world; and so, for most of a millennium, as human beings screamed in agony—decaying from starvation, eaten by leprosy and plague, dying in droves in their twenties—the men of the mind, who could have provided their earthly salvation, abandoned them for otherworldly fantasies.

Theologians, and religionists in general, start with a fantasy premise and then proceed to apply rigorous formal logic to tease out its implications. Stark himself points out that “theology consists of formal reasoning about God.” This is admirably exact. Theologians, beginning with a wished-for creation of their own minds, analyze that creation’s characteristics by rigorous application of the principles of formal—that is, deductive—logic.

Nothing is given to man on earth - struggle is built into the nature of life, and conflict is possible - the hero is the man who lets no obstacle prevent him from pursuing the values he has chosen.