Metaphysics and Politics

"The gray cotton, which was neither quite fog nor clouds, hung in sloppy wads between sky and mountains, making the sky look like an old mattress spilling its stuffings down the sides of the peaks.  A crusted snow covered the ground, belonging neither to winter nor to spring. An icy moisture hung in the air, and she felt an icy pinprick once in a while, which was neither raindrop nor snowflake. The weather seemed unwilling to take a stand and hung noncommittably to some sort of road's middle; Board of Directors weather, she thought." -- Atlas Shrugged, page 486.

“All thinking is a process of identification and integration. Man perceives a blob of color; by integrating the evidence of his sight and his touch, he learns to identify it as a solid object; he learns to identify the object as a table; he learns that the table is made of wood; he learns that the wood consists of cells, that the cells consist of molecules, that the molecules consist of atoms. All through this process, the work of his mind consists of answers to a single question: What is it? His means to establish the truth of his answers is logic, and logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. ...  Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man’s only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth."  -- John Galt's Speech.