Ayn Rand Quotes About Justification

• Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Liberty, Doctrine

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.465, Penguin

• 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

  Country, America, Russia

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.143, 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

• I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life.

  Ayn Rand

  Life, Rights, Novelists

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.78, Penguin

• [Altruism] is a moral system which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the sole justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, value and virtue. This is the moral base of collectivism, of all dictatorships.

  Ayn Rand

  Sacrifice, Men, Self

• People don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they'll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue - a highly intellectual virtue - out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and their guilt.

  Ayn Rand

  Knowledge, Blessing, Thinking

  "Atlas Shrugged". Book by Ayn Rand, Part Two: Either-Or, Chapter One: The Man who Belonged On Earth, p. 346, 1957.

• There can be no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil.

  Ayn Rand

  Evil, Justification, Knows

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.72, Penguin

• Ideas, in a free society, are not a crime- and neither can they serve as the justification of a crime.

  Ayn Rand

  Ideas, Crime, Justification

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.129, Penguin

• Rationalization is a cover-up, a process of providing one's emotions with a false identity, of giving them spurious explanations and justifications - in order to hide one's motives, not just from others, but primarily from oneself. The price of rationalizing is the hampering, the distortion, and, ultimately, the destruction of one's cognitive faculty. Rationalization is a process not of perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one's emotions.

  Ayn Rand

  Reality, Order, Giving

  Ayn Rand (1984). “Philosophy: Who Needs It”, p.25, Penguin

• The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve 'the common good.' It is true that capitalism does -- if that catch-phrase has any meaning -- but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification for capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man's rational nature, that it protects man's survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice

  Ayn Rand

  Lying, Men, Justice

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.78, Penguin

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