Ayn Rand Quotes
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Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.
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In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions and interests dictate.
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And this is the whole shabby secret: to some men, the sight of an achievement is a reproach, a reminder that their own lives are irrational, and that there is no loophole - no escape from reason and reality. Their resentment is the cornered Dionysian element baring its teeth.
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It is fear that drives the hippies to seek the warmth, the protection, the safety of a herd. When they speak of merging themselves into a 'greater whole,' it is their fear that they hope to drown in the undemanding waves of unfastidious human bodies - and what they hope to fish out of that pool is the momentary illusion of an unearned personal significance.
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Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).
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What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.
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I hope you will understand my hesitation in writing to one whom I admire as the greatest representative of a philosophy to which I want to dedicate my whole life.
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Today, racism is regarded as a crime if practiced by a majority-but as an inalienable right if practiced by a minority.
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Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.
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There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers.
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The moral precept to adopt...is: Judge, and be prepared to be judged.
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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. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear.
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Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday... The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production.
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Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression 'individual rights' is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today’s intellectual chaos). But the expression 'collective rights' is a contradiction in terms.
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When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.
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... if the majority of men cannot know what is good for them, each for himself, how can they know what is good for others by proxy? If they are to be controlled by specialists, how and by what standard can they choose the specialist?
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When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism-with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.
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An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.
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Never initiate the use of force against another man. Never let his use of force against you remain unanswered by force.
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Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.
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Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds, I am not a sacrifice on their altars.
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This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before...The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of spirit.
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A gun is not an argument.
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By the same principle, the government may not give special leniency to the perpetrator of a crime, on the grounds of the nature of his ideas.