Ayn Rand Quotes About Individual Rights

• Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.” An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.

  Ayn Rand

  Respect, Mistake, Men

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.231, Penguin

• America's founding Ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more - and nothing less.

  Ayn Rand

  Rights, Usa, America

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.37, Penguin

• America’s founding ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more-and nothing less. The rest-everything that America achieved, everything she became, everything 'noble and just,' and heroic, and great, and unprecedented in human history-was the logical consequence of fidelity to that one principle.

  Ayn Rand

  Rights, Usa, America

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.37, Penguin

• The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

  Ayn Rand

  Philosophy, Humor, Rights

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.125, Penguin

• 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

  Freedom, Rights, Political

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.100, Penguin

• Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority.

  Ayn Rand

  Rights, Liberty, Majority

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.100, Penguin

• The government was set to protect man from criminals-and the constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed at private citizens, but against the government-as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Rights, Criminals

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.92, Penguin

• Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships.

  Ayn Rand

  Rights, Laissez Faire Capitalism, Recognition

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.35, Penguin

• There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept 'just a few controls' is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of the government’s unlimited, arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement. As an example of this process, observe the present domestic policy of the United States.

  Ayn Rand

  Rights, Government, Principles

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.65, Penguin

• Individualism regards man - every man - as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful co-existence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights - and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members.

  Ayn Rand

  Independent, Men, Rights

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.231, Penguin

• The government's only proper job is to protect individual rights against violence by force or fraud ... to protect men from foreign invaders ... to settle disputes among men according to objective laws ... The greatness of the Founding Fathers was how well they understood this issue and how close some of them came to understanding it perfectly.

  Ayn Rand

  Jobs, Father, Greatness

• 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.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Expression, Rights

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.385, Penguin

• Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights; it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. When unlimited and unrestricted by individual rights, a government is man's deadliest enemy. It is not as protection against private actions, but against governmental actions that the Bill of Rights was written.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Rights, Enemy

• Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

  Ayn Rand

  Rights, Recognition, Individual

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.17, Penguin

• Capitalism is based on individual rights - not on the sacrifice of the individual to the 'public good' of the collective.

  Ayn Rand

  Sacrifice, Rights, Individual

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.191, Penguin

• Of all the statist violations of individual rights in a mixed economy, the military draft is the worst. It is an abrogation of rights. It negates man’s fundamental right-the right to life-and establishes the fundamental principle of statism: that a man’s life belongs to the state, and the state may claim it by compelling him to sacrifice it in battle. Once that principle is accepted, the rest is only a matter of time.

  Ayn Rand

  Military, Sacrifice, Men

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.216, Penguin

• Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

  Ayn Rand

  Witty, Humor, Mean

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.305, Penguin

• Any group or "collective," large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the "rights" of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking... A group, as such, has no rights.

  Ayn Rand

  Rights, Agreement, Individual Choice

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.385, Penguin

• The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully - and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it. But this is the concept to which we owe our lives - the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience.

  Ayn Rand

  Country, Men, Thinking

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.231, Penguin

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