Ayn Rand Quotes - Page 19

• Morality pertains only to the sphere of man's free will - only to those actions which are open to his choice.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Choices, Religion

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• A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry.

  Ayn Rand

  Running, Needs, Fuel

  Ayn Rand (2005). “Three Plays”, p.69, Penguin

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• To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.

  Ayn Rand

  Accessories, Murder, Victim

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.435, Penguin

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• I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals.

  Ayn Rand

  Liberty, Arise, Cannibal

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.366, Hamilton Books

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• Kant is the most evil man in mankind's history.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Evil, Mankind

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.255, Penguin

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• You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island - it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today - and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.

  Ayn Rand

  Life, Reality, Men

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.323, Penguin

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• The right to life is the source of all rights -- and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Men, Rights

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.380, Penguin

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• 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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• Men prosper or fail, survive or perish in proportion to the degree of their rationality.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Degrees, Failing

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.15, Penguin

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• I am an innovator. This is a term of distinction, a term of honor, rather than something to hide or apologize for. Anyone who
  has new or valuable ideas to offer stands outside the intellectual status quo. But the status quo is not a stream, let alone a 'mainstream'.
  It is a stagnant swamp. It is the innovators who carry mankind forward.

  Ayn Rand

  Ideas, Intellectual, Honor

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• 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

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• The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive — a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society — a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself.... The purpose of man's life, say both, is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Zombie, Doe

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

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• A rational mind does not work under compulsion; it does not subordinate its grasp of reality to anyone's orders, directives, or controls; it does not sacrifice its knowledge, its view of the truth, to anyone's opinions, threats, wishes, plans.

  Ayn Rand

  Truth, Knowledge, Sacrifice

  "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal".

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• Rulers exist entirely through the persons of others. Their goal is in their subjects, in the activity of enslaving. They are as dependent as the beggar, the social worker and the bandit. The form of dependence does not matter.

  Ayn Rand

  Goal, Political, Doe

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.76, Penguin

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• To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Action, Life Is

  Ayn Rand (2005). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.961, Penguin

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• I like to think of fire held in a man's hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind--and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Thinking, Fire

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.998, Penguin

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• Needless to say, under either system [socialism or fascism], the inequalities of income and standard of living are greater than anything possible under a free economy -- and a man's position is determined, not by his productive ability and achievement, but by political pull and force. Under both systems, sacrifice is invoked as a magic, omnipotent solution in any crisis -- and "the public good" is the altar on which victims are immolated.

  Ayn Rand

  Sacrifice, Men, Political

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.175, Penguin

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• Do not ever say that the desire to 'do good' by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

  Ayn Rand

  Peace, War, Stupid

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• When a man declares: "There are no blacks and whites [in morality]" he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: "I am unwilling to be wholly good - and please don't regard me as wholly evil!"

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Men, Evil

  "The Virtue of Selfishness". Book by Ayn Rand, 1964.

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• Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. Virtue is the act by which one aims and/or keeps it.

  Ayn Rand

  Perseverance, Humility, Gains

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• Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.

  Ayn Rand

  Business, Thinking, Productive Work

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.105, Penguin

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• Under fascism, citizens retain the responsibilities of owning property, without freedom to act and without any of the advantages of ownership. Under socialism, government officials acquire all the advantages of ownership, without any of the responsibilities, since they do not hold title to the property, but merely the right to use it -- at least until the next purge. In either case, the government officials hold the economic, political and legal power of life or death over the citizens.

  Ayn Rand

  Responsibility, Government, Political

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• Roark smiled, "Gail, if this boat were sinking, I'd give my life to save you. Not because it's any kind of duty. Only because I like you, for reasons and standards of my own. I could die for you. But I couldn't and wouldn't live for you.

  Ayn Rand

  I Like You, Giving, Kind

  Ayn Rand (2005). “The Fountainhead”, p.580, Penguin

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• Genius is an exaggeration of dimension. So is elephantiasis. Both may be only a disease.

  Ayn Rand

  Genius, May, Disease

  Ayn Rand (2005). “The Fountainhead”, p.290, Penguin

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• Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group - whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called 'the common good'.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Men, Class

  "The Only Path to Tommorow". Readers Digest, pp. 88-90, January, 1944.

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