Ayn Rand Quotes About Evil

• So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?

  Ayn Rand

  Funny, Inspiring, Money

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.315, Penguin

• The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose.

  Ayn Rand

  Life, Men, Order

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.404, Penguin

• Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.

  Ayn Rand

  Life, Running, Fake People

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.316, Hamilton Books

• There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.

  Ayn Rand

  Inspirational, Courage, Two Sides

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.102, Penguin

• In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

  Ayn Rand

  Winning, Evil, Liberty

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.170, Penguin

• Two world wars, three monstrous dictatorships-in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Red China-plus every lesser variant of devastating socialist experimentation in a global spread of brutality and despair, have not prompted modern intellectuals to question or revise their dogma. They still think that it is daring, idealistic and unconventional to denounce the rich. They still believe that money is the root of all evil-except government money, which is the solution to all problems.

  Ayn Rand

  War, Believe, Thinking

• Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Men, Evil

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

• The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.

  Ayn Rand

  Evil, Giving, World

  Ayn Rand (2005). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.1006, Penguin

• The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative. If some "pacifist" society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it.

  Ayn Rand

  Thug, Men, Self

• When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, "Who is destroying the world?" You are.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Men, Evil

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.1448, Penguin

• So you think that money is the root of all evil? [...] Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

  Ayn Rand

  Money, Men, Thinking

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.70, Penguin

• The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser's intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture's dominant trend is geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.

  Ayn Rand

  Character, Winning, Thug

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.53, Penguin

• Government control of the economy, no matter in whose behalf, has been the source of all the evils in our industrial society -- and the solution is laissez-faire capitalism, i.e., the abolition of any and all forms of intervention in production and trade, the separation of State and Economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of Church and State.

  Ayn Rand

  Government, Evil, Church

• It was the only thing I ever really wanted. And that’s the sin that can’t be forgiven--that I hadn’t done what I wanted. It feels so dirty and pointless and monstrous, as one feels about insanity, because there’s no sense to it, no dignity, nothing but pain--and wasted pain...why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage.

  Ayn Rand

  Courage, Pain, Dirty

  Ayn Rand (2005). “The Fountainhead”, p.571, Penguin

• Ask yourself why totalitarian dictatorships find it necessary to pour money and effort into propaganda for their own helpless, chained, gagged slaves, who have no means of protest or defense. The answer is that even the humblest peasant or the lowest savage would rise in blind rebellion, were he to realize that he is being immolated, not to some incomprehensible noble purpose, but to plain, naked human evil.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Tyrants, Evil

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.136, Penguin

• 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

• 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

  Winning, Evil, Hatred

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.170, Penguin

• Man's basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.

  Ayn Rand

  Ignorance, Men, Evil

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.23, Penguin

• All the evils, abuses, and iniquities, popularly ascribed to businessmen and to capitalism, were not caused by an unregulated economy or by a free market, but by government intervention into the economy.

  Ayn Rand

  Government, Evil, Abuse

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.45, Penguin

• Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.

  Ayn Rand

  Life Changing, Passion, Mean

  Ayn Rand (2005). “The Fountainhead”, p.571, Penguin

• When you have established that one alternative is good and the other is evil, there is no justification for the choice of a mixture. There is no justification ever for choosing any part of what you know to be evil.

  Ayn Rand

  Evil, Choices, Alternatives

• Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Don't ignore your own desires.... Don't sacrifice them. Examine their cause. There is a limit to how much you should have to bear.

  Ayn Rand

  Sacrifice, Thinking, Reality

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.1454, Penguin

• There are no evil thoughts except one; the refusal to think.

  Ayn Rand

  Dream, Thinking, Evil

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.320, Hamilton Books

• We are on strike, we, the men of the mind. We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.

  Ayn Rand

  Work, Men, Self

  Ayn Rand (2005). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.954, Penguin

• Evil requires the sanction of the victim.

  Ayn Rand

  Evil, Historical, Literature

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