 If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.
Ayn Rand
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=arc_ayn_rand_man_rights
The growth of taxation and government control destroyed the Roman economy and caused the collapse of Rome, which allowed the barbarians to take over. The same thing is happening today. We need not give in to the barbarians, but they are certainly waiting anxiously.
Ayn Rand
Ford Hall Forum; 1967 [excerpted from the book: "Ayn Rand Answers; p. 5"]
An entity which was not concerned with itself or, to put it better, an entity that did not value itself, would not exist for very long. But now children are below the understanding of the issues and, in effect, do not have a choice. It is when children begin to speak -- when they begin to acquire ideas -- that their choice begins. And the idea of self-sacrifice is a totally artificial, very evil idea which children and adults learn from others -- which is passed from person to person. Now this doesn't mean that if a child were left alone he would naturally be selfish, properly. No, because it an enormous achievement to discover rational selfishness. Not acting on whim or pleasure of the moment, but knowing what is rationally an imporant goal, of what value is it to you, and how to achieve it. The idea of being rationally selfish is not available to children. It would take a long period of thought -- or the proper teaching -- for them to discover it.
Ayn Rand
1962 Interview on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson
I think that today's conservatives are worse than today's liberals. I think ... if anyone destroys this country, it will be the conservatives -- because they do not know how to preach capitalism, to explain it to the people, because they do nothing except apologize, and because they're all altruists. They're all based on religious altruism and, on that combination of ideas, you cannot save this country.
Ayn Rand
1979 Interview by Tom Snyder on "The Tomorrow Show"
It is a grave error to suppose that a dictatorship rules a nation by means of strict, rigid laws which are obeyed and enforced with rigorous, military precision. Such a rule would be evil, but almost bearable; men could endure the harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific and stable; it is not the known that breaks men’s spirits, but the unpredictable. A dictatorship has to be capricious; it has to rule by means of the unexpected, the incomprehensible, the wantonly irrational; ...
Ayn Rand
“Antitrust: The Rule of Unreason,” The Objectivist Newsletter, Feb. 1962, 5
By elevating the issue of helping others into the central and primary issue of ethics, altruism has destroyed the concept of any authentic benevolence or good will among men. It has indoctrinated men with the idea that to value another human being is an act of selflessness, thus implying that a man can have no personal interest in others—that to value another means to sacrifice oneself—that any love, respect or admiration a man may feel for others is not and cannot be a source of his own enjoyment, but is a threat to his existence, a sacrificial blank check signed over to his loved ones.
Ayn Rand
“The Ethics of Emergencies,” The Virtue of Selfishness, 43.
"Do you think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power the government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."
Ayn Rand
LibertyTree.ca
"To say 'I love you' one must first be able to say the 'I.' "
Ayn Rand
jittery.com
One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.
Ayn Rand
Voice of Reason
To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.
Ayn Rand
Facebook | Ayn Rand
There was no order in his reading; but there was order in what remained of it in his mind.
Ayn Rand
—of the self-educated youth Stretch Wynand
If an uncompromising stand is to be smeared as 'extremism,' then that smear is directed at any devotion to values, any loyalty to principles, any profound conviction, any consistency, any steadfastness, any passion, any dedication to an unbreached, inviolate truth -- any man of integrity.
Ayn Rand
." -- Ayn Rand in " 'Extremism' or The Art of Smearing", Chapter 17 of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.
I am in favor of such laws because, presumably, if there is a court case, somebody has been hurt. And if a witness has knowledge relevant to the issue and he refuses to testify, he is the one who is violating the rights of the defendant, or whomever his testimony involves. If either party in the case needs the information he has, he couldn't have an honest reason for refusing to provide it, because he is interfering with justice. He is saying, in effect, "The court may decide wrongly without me, but I still don't want to testify." I don't think that's legitimate.
Ayn Rand
Raymond Newman Journal On compeling subpoenaed witnesses to testify or face contempt citations, fines and imprisonment
The respect and good will that men of self-esteem feel toward other human beings is profoundly egoistic; they feel, in effect: 'Other men are of value because they are of the same species as myself.' In revering living entities, they are revering their own life. This is the psychological base of any emotions of sympathy and any feeling of 'species solidarity'
Ayn Rand
Virtue of Selfishness - The Ethics of Emergencies
Tyranny requires non-objective laws. No matter how severe a form of government you might have, if its laws and edicts are objective, it is not a tyranny.
Ayn Rand
“Objective Law”
Since nature does not guarantee automatic security, success and survival to any human being, it is only the dictatorial presumptuousness and the moral cannibalism of the altruist-collectivist code that permits a man to suppose (or idly to daydream) that he can somehow guarantee such security to some men at the expense of others.
Ayn Rand
VOS "Collectivized Ethics," p.104
[Y]ou ask him what does he regard the facts of reality as: a necessity or a contingency? He'll say, 'Of course it's a contingency, because God made it this way, and he could have made it another.' And you say, 'Good-bye.'
Ayn Rand
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
Retroactive (or ex post facto) law- i.e., a law that punishes a man for an action which was not legally defined as a crime at the time he committed it- is rejected by and contrary to the entire tradition of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. It is a form of persecution practiced only in dictatorships and forbidden by every civilized code of law. It is specifically forbidden by the United States Constitution. It is not supposed to exist in the United States and it is not applied to anyone- except to businessmen.
Ayn Rand
America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business
Q. What do you think of the Libertarian Party? AR: I’d rather vote for Bob Hope, the Marx Brothers, or Jerry Lewis. I don’t think they’re as funny as Professor Hospers and the Libertarian Party. If, at a time like this, John Hospers takes ten votes away from Nixon (which I doubt he’ll do), it would be a moral crime. I don’t care about Nixon, and I care even less about Hospers. But this is no time to engage in publicity seeking, which all these crank political parties are doing. If you want to spread your ideas, do it through education. But don’t run for President—or even dogcatcher—if you’re going to help McGovern.
Ayn Rand
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/NewsDiscussions/2126_2.shtml#52
The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it.
Ayn Rand
"The Only Path to Tomorrow" Readers Digest, Jan 1944
"If he advocates the right political principles for the wrong metaphysical reasons, the contradiction is his problem, not ours."
Ayn Rand
Common law is good in the way witchdoctors were once good: some of their discoveries were a primitive form of medicine, and to that extent achieved something. But once a science of medicine is established, you don't return to witchdoctors. Similarly, common law established--by tradition or inertia-- some proper principles (and some dreadful ones). But once a civilization grasps the concept of law, and particularly of a constitution, common law becomes unnecessary and should not be regarded as law. In a free society, anyone can have customs; but that's not law.
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Answers
When thinkers accept those who deny the existence of thinking, as fellow thinkers of a different school of thought - it is they who achieve the destruction of the mind. They grant the enemy's basic premise, thus granting the sanction of reason to formal dementia. A basic premise is an absolute that permits no co-operation with its antithesis and tolerates no tolerance.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged - Hugh Akston speaking to Dagny
No, justice has not ceased to exist. How could it? It is possible for men to abandon their sight of it, and then it is justice that destroys them. But it is not possible for justice to go out of existence, because one is an attribute of the other, because justice is the act of acknowledging that which exists...
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged - Judge Narragansett speaking to Dagny
Every form of happiness is one, every desire is driven by the same motor - by our love for a single value, for the highest potentiality of our own existence - and every achievement is an expression of it.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged - Francisco speaking to Dagny in Galt's Gulch
They could not see the world beyond the mountains, there was only a void of darkness and rock … But far in the distance, on the edge of the earth, a small flame was waving in the wind, the defiantly stubborn flame of Wyatt’s torch, twisting, being torn and regaining its hold, not to be uprooted or extinguished. It seemed to be calling and waiting for the words John Galt was now to pronounce. “The road is cleared,” said Galt. “We are going back to the world.”
Ayn Rand
To abstain from condemning a torturer is to become an accessory to his crimes
Ayn Rand
An Untitled Letter
What is the nature of Love? Love is a command to rise to one's highest potential, the best and noblest vision of oneself. Love is a reward, the greatest we can earn, granted to us for the moral qualities we have achieved in our life.
Ayn Rand
Helen Mirren portraying Ayn Rand in "The Passion of Ayn Rand."
...that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged, "This is John Galt Speaking"
There is a stage of worship which makes the worshiper himself - an object of reverence.
Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead
In the spiritual realm, the currency--which exists in limited quantity and must be teleologically measured in the pursuit of any value--is time, i.e., one's life. Since a value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep, and the amount of possible action is limited by the duration of one's lifespan, it is part of one's life that one invests in everything one values.
Ayn Rand
Rand, A. (1966, 1990). Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded second edition. New York: Meridian. p 34.
Man's consciousness is his least known and most abused vital organ. Most people believe that consciousness as such is some sort of indeterminate faculty which has no nature, no specific identity and therefore no requirements, no needs, no rules for being properly or improperly used.... Men abuse, subvert and starve their consciousness in a manner they would not dream of applying to their hair, toenails or stomachs. They know that these things have a specific identity and specific requirements, and, if one whishes to preserve them, one must comb one's hair, trim one's toenails and refrain from swallowing rat poison.
Ayn Rand
Our Cultural Value-Deprivation
Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction.
Ayn Rand
There is no such thing as Objectivism
Ayn Rand
The Art of Nonfiction, p 27
Besides, every means is a sub-end.
Ayn Rand
Mayhew, R. (Ed.). (1995). Ayn Rand's Marginalia. (p. 123) New Milford: Second Renaissance Books.
You goddamn fool, do you think I consider their question debatable?
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged Part One Chapter VII "The Exploiters And The Exploited"
All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.
Ayn Rand
Capitalism: Who Needs It?- The Nature of Government
Accept the fact that the achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness—not pain or mindless self-indulgence—is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged, "This Is John Galt Speaking"
In America, religion is relatively nonmystical. Religious teachers here are predominantly good, healthy materialists. They follow common sense. They would not stand in our way. The majority of religious people in this country do not accept on faith the idea of jumping into a cannibal’s pot and giving away their last shirt to the backward people of the world. Many religious leaders preach this today, because of their own leftist politics; it’s not inherent in being religious. There are many historical and philosophical connections between altruism and religion, but the function of religion in this country is not altruism. You would not find too much opposition to Objectivism among religious Americans. There are rational religious people. In fact I was pleased and astonished to discover that some religious people support Objectivism. If you want to be a full Objectivist, you cannot reconcile that with religion; but that doesn’t mean religious people cannot be individualists and fight for freedom. They can, and this country is the best proof of it.
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q&A, edited by Robert Mayhew, 2005, p. 63. (Hat tip to Michael Kelly for this reference)
I don't give a damn about my critics. I have yet to meet a good one.
Ayn Rand
The Phil Donahue Show
"The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendor that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach. But America's skyscrapers were not built by public funds nor for a public purpose: they were built by the energy, initiative and wealth of private individuals for personal profit. And, instead of impoverishing the people, these skyscrapers, as they rose higher and higher, kept raising the people's standard of living ..."
Ayn Rand
The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live,
Ayn Rand
If you agree with some tenets of Objectivism, but disagree with others, do not call yourself an Objectivist; give proper authorship credit for the parts you agree with—and then indulge in any flights of fancy you wish, on your own.
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand, "To the Readers of The Objectivist Forum,” The Objectivist Forum, Vol. 1, No. 1, ARI FAQ
He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost fascinating.
Ayn Rand
Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.
Ayn Rand
Opening paragraph of the personal statements by a Ph.D. student applicant
Such is the basic contradiction---and the terrible parasitic immorality---of any attempt to "tongue-in-cheek" thrillers. It requires that one employ all the values of a thriller in order to hold the audience's interest, yet turn these values against themselves, that one damage the very elements one is using and counting on. It means an attempt to cash in on the thing one is mocking, to profit by the audience's hunger for Romanticism while seeking to destroy it. This is not the method of a legitimate satire: satire does not share the values of that which it denounces; it denounces by means and context of an opposite set of values.
Ayn Rand
Bootleg Romanticism: The Romantic Manifesto
Christ, in terms of the Christian philosophy, is the human ideal. He personifies that which men should strive to emulate. Yet, according to the Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the non-ideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice. If I were a Christian, nothing would make me more indignant than that: the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the non-ideal, or virtue to vice. And it is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used.
Ayn Rand
“Playboy’s Interview with Ayn Rand,” – ARL p 411
The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.
Ayn Rand
GS, FNI, 157 – ARL p 158
Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character.
Ayn Rand
Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement.
Ayn Rand
The Objectivist: September 1971
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