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Ayn Rand

135 quotes

“The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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).”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since there is no such entity as ‘the public,’ since the public is merely a number of individuals, any claimed or implied conflict of ‘the public interest’ with private interests means that the interests of some men are to be sacrificed to the interests and wishes of others. Since the concept is so conveniently undefinable, its use rests only on any given gang's ability to proclaim that ‘The public, c’est moi’—and to maintain the claim at the point of a gun.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Statism is a system of institutionalized violence and perpetual civil war. It leaves men no choice but to fight to seize political power -- to rob or be robbed, to kill or be killed. ... Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A gun is not an argument.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So long as [men] hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) alleged 'good' can justify It — there can be no peace ‘within’ a nation and no peace among nations.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Businessmen are the one group that distinguishes capitalism and the American way of life from the totalitarian statism that is swallowing the rest of the world. All the other social groups- workers, farmers, professional men, scientists, soldiers- exist under dictatorships, even though they exist in chains, in terror, in misery, and in progressive self-destruction. But there is no such group as businessmen under a dictatorship. Their place is taken by armed thugs: by bureaucrats and commissars. Businessmen are the symbol of a free society- the symbol of America.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is futile to fight against, if one does not know what one is fighting for.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Remember also that the smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The evidence is incontrovertible. The contrast between West and East Berlin is the latest demonstration, like a laboratory experiment for all to see. Yet those who are loudest in proclaiming their desire to eliminate poverty are loudest in denouncing capitalism. Man's well-being is not their goal.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let anyone who believes that a high standard of living is the achievement of labor unions and government controls ask himself the following question: If one had a "time machine" and transported the united labor chieftains of America, plus three million government bureaucrats, back to the tenth century—would they be able to provide the medieval serf with electric light, refrigerators, automobiles, and television sets?”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the paradoxes of our age is the fact that the intellectuals, the politicians, and all the sundry voices that choke like asthma the throat of our communications media, have never gasped and stuttered so loudly about their devotion to the public good, and about the people's will as the supreme criterion of value - and never have they been so grossly indifferent to the people. The reason, obviously, is that collectivist slogans serve as the rationalization for those who intend, not to follow the people, but to rule them.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most profound breach in this country is not between the rich and the poor, but between the people and the intellectuals. In their view of life, the American people are predominantly Apollonian. The mainstream intellectuals are Dionysian. This means the people are reality-oriented, common sense-oriented, technology-oriented. The intellectuals call this "materialistic," and "middle-class." The intellectuals are emotion-oriented, and seek in panic an escape from a reality they are unable to deal with, and from a technological civilization that ignores their feelings.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some day, the world will discover that, without thought, there can be no love.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a kind of malicious wink, a contemptuous sneer in the public voices claiming the hippies as heroes. The hippies are a desperate herd looking for a master, to be taken over by anyone - anyone who would tell them how to live without demanding the effort of thinking. Theirs is the mentality ready for a fuhrer.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You have all heard the old bromide to the effect that man has his eyes on the stars and his feet in the mud. It is usually taken to mean that man's reason and his physical senses are the element pulling him down to the mud while his mystical, super-rational emotions are the element that lifts him to the stars. This is the grimmest inversion of many in mankind's history. But, last summer, reality offered you a literal dramatization of the truth. It is man's irrational emotions that bring him down to the mud. It is man's reason that lifts him to the stars.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's individual value-judgments.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An artist reveals his naked soul in his work - and so, gentle reader, do you when you respond to it.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Art is man's metaphysical mirror; what a rational man seeks to see in that mirror is a salute; what an irrational man seeks to see is a justification – even if only a justification of his depravity, as a last convulsion of his betrayed self-esteem.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Objectivist (February 1971)
“They (Native Americans) didn't have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using. What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their 'right' to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Q and A session following her address to the graduating class of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974 - found in Endgame: Resistance, by Derrick Jensen, Seven Stories Press, 2006, pg…
“Now, I don't care to discuss the alleged complaints American Indians have against this country. I believe, with good reason, the most unsympathetic Hollywood portrayal of Indians and what they did to the white man. They had no right to a country merely because they were born here and then acted like savages. The white man did not conquer this country...”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address To The Graduating Class Of The United States Military Academy at West Point (1974)
“The Arabs are one of the least developed cultures. They are typically nomads. Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it's the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ayn Rand Ford Hall Forum lecture (1974) text published on the website of The Ayn Rand Institute
“The worst evil that you can do, psychologically, is to laugh at yourself. That means spitting in your own face.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Question period following Lecture 11 of Leonard Peikoff's series "The Philosophy of Objectivism" (1976)
“The trouble with the world today is philosophical: only the right philosophy can save us. But this party plagiarizes some of my ideas, mixes them with the exact opposite—with religionists, anarchists and every intellectual misfit and scum they can find—and call themselves libertarians and run for office.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Rand, Ayn (2005). Mayhew, Robert, ed. Ayn Rand Answers, the Best of Her Q&A. New York: New American Library. p. 73. (1976)
“If you mean whose side one should be on, Israel or the Arabs, I would certainly say Israel because it's the advanced, technological, civilized country amidst a group of almost totally primitive savages who have not changed for years and who are racist and who resent Israel because it's bringing industry, intelligence, and modern technology into their stagnation.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Q and A session during taping of Donohue, Live in New York (1979) Ayn Rand on Israel and the Middle East
“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.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A crime is the violation of the right(s) of other men by force (or fraud). It is only the initiation of physical force against others- i.e., the recourse to violence- that can be classified as a crime in a free society (as distinguished from a civil wrong). Ideas, in a free society, are not a crime- and neither can they serve as the justification of a crime.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...observe that in all the propaganda of the ecologists—amidst all their appeals to nature and pleas for 'harmony with nature'—there is no discussion of man's needs and the requirements of his survival. Man is treated as if he were an unnatural phenomenon. Man cannot survive in the kind of state of nature that the ecologists envision—i.e., on the level of sea urchins or polar bears...”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Today, racism is regarded as a crime if practiced by a majority—but as an inalienable right if practiced by a minority.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system—and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As far as the feminist movement is concerned, I am a male chauvinist.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source