Ayn Rand Quotes About Animals

• The difference between animals and humans is that animals change themselves for the environment, but humans change the environment for themselves.

  Ayn Rand

  Change, Future, Animal

• An animal is equipped for sustaining its life; its senses provide it with an automatic code of action, an automatic knowledge of what is good for it or evil... Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Animal, Men

  Ayn Rand (1984). “Philosophy: Who Needs It”, p.75, Penguin

• If a drought strikes them, animals perish--man builds irrigation canals; if a flood strikes them, animals perish--man builds dams; if a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish--man writes the Constitution of the United States.

  Ayn Rand

  Writing, Men, Animal

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.284, Penguin

• Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons,and to make weapons - a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.

  Ayn Rand

  Religious, Animal, Men

• The social system based on and consonant with the altruist morality-with the code of self-sacrifice- is socialism, in all or any of its variants: fascism, Nazism, communism. All of them treat man as a sacrificial animal to be immolated for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the society, the state.

  Ayn Rand

  Sacrifice, Animal, Men

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.33, Penguin

• Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others-misfortu ne is not a mortgage on achievement-fai lure is not a mortgage on success-sufferi ng is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence-man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone’s altar nor for anyone’s cause-life is not one huge hospital.

  Ayn Rand

  Animal, Men, Goal

• 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

  Mean, Animal, Men

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.19, Penguin

• When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.

  Ayn Rand

  Believe, Men, Animal

• If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and ... if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own I would refuse... I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist.

  Ayn Rand

  Life, Mean, Fighting

  "The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z".

• Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.

  Ayn Rand

  Animal, Unique, Men

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.12, Penguin

• Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?

  Ayn Rand

  Freedom, Animal, Men

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.141, Penguin

• I am older than you. Believe me, there is no other way to live on earth. Men are not open to truth or reason. They cannot be reached by a rational argument. The mind is powerless against them. Yet we have to deal with them. If we want to accomplish anything, we have to deceive them into letting us accomplish it. Or force them. They understand nothing else. We cannot expect their support for any endeavor of the intellect, for any goal of the spirit. They are nothing but vicious animals. They are greedy, self-indulgent, predatory dollar-chasers

  Ayn Rand

  Believe, Animal, Men

• If that's the price of getting together, then I'll be damned if I want to live on the same earth with any human beings! If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? Nothing can make self-immolation proper. Nothing can give them the right to turn men into sacrificial animals. Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability. If that is right, then we'd better start slaughtering one another, because there isn't any right at all in the world!

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Animal, Self

• The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Animal, Men

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.21, Penguin

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