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Do Not Keep Silent When Your Own Ideas And Values Are Being Attacked. If A Dictatorship Ever Comes To This Country, It Will Be By The Fault Of Those Who Keep Silent. We Are Still Free Enough To Speak. Do We Have Time? No One Can Tell.

-Ayn Rand

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Do Not Keep Silent

Ayn Rand

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Do Not Keep Silent When Your Own Ideas And Values Are Being Attacked. If A Dictatorship Ever Comes To This Country, It Will Be By The Fault Of Those Who Keep Silent. We Are Still Free Enough To Speak. Do We Have Time? No One Can Tell.

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At First, Man Was Enslaved By The Gods. But He Broke Their Chains. Then He Was Enslaved By The Kings. But He Broke Their Chains. He Was Enslaved By His Birth, By His Kin, By His Race. But He Broke Their Chains. He Declared To All His Brothers That A Man Has Rights Which Neither God Nor King Nor Other Men Can Take Away From Him, No Matter What Their Number, For His Is The Right Of Man, And There Is No Right On Earth Above This Right. And He Stood On The Threshold Of Freedom For Which The Blood Of The Centuries Behind Him Had Been Spilled.

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.

If Men Want To Oppose War, It Is Statism That They Must Oppose. So Long As They Hold The Tribal Notion That The Individual Is Sacrificial Fodder For The Collective, That Some Men Have The Right To Rule Others By Force, And That Some (any) Alleged “good” Can Justify It-there Can Be No Peace Within A Nation And No Peace Among Nations.

The Charming Aspect Of Christmas Is The Fact That It Expresses Good Will In A Cheerful, Happy, Benevolent, Non-sacrificial Way. One Says: “merry Christmas”-not “weep And Repent.” And The Good Will Is Expressed In A Material, Earthly Form-by Giving Presents To One's Friends, Or By Sending Them Cards In Token Of Remembrance . . . .

By What He Chooses To Present And By How He Presents It, Any Author Expresses His Fundamental, Metaphysical Values.

Thinking Men Cannot Be Ruled; Ambitious Men Do Not Stagnate.

The Causes Of Illusions Are Not Pretty To Discover. They're Either Vicious Or Tragic.

Ethics Is A Code Of Values Which Guide Our Choices And Actions And Determine The Purpose And Course Of Our Lives.

A 'whim' Is A Desire Experienced By A Person Who Does Not Know And Does Not Care To Discover Its Cause.

Civilization Is The Process Of Setting Man Free From Men.

Progress Of Society

It Is Morally Obscene To Regard Wealth As An Anonymous, Tribal Product And To Talk About 'redistributing' It.

A Moment Or An Eternity—did It Matter? Life, Undefeated, Existed And Could Exist.

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.

Individual Choice

Let No Man Posture As An Advocate Of Peace If He Proposes Or Supports Any Social System That Initiates The Use Of Force Against Individual Men, In Any Form.

No Matter How Vast Your Knowledge Or How Modest, It Is Your Own Mind That Has To Acquire It. It Is Only With Your Own Knowledge That You Can Deal. It Is Only Your Own Knowledge That You Can Claim To Possess Or Ask Others To Consider. Your Mind Is Your Only Judge Of Truth - And If Others Dissent From Your Verdict, Reality Is The Court Of Final Appeal. Nothing But A Man's Mind Can Perform That Complex, Delicate, Crucial Process Of Identification Which Is Thinking. Nothing Can Direct The Process But His Own Judgment. Nothing Can Direct His Judgment But His Moral Integrity.

There Are No White Lies, There Is Only The Blackest Of Destruction, And A White Lie Is The Blackest Of All.

No Man Can Use His Brain To Think For Another.

No Individual Or Private Group Or Private Organization Has The Legal Power To Initiate The Use Of Physical Force Against Other Individuals Or Groups And To Compel Them To Act Against Their Own Voluntary Choice. Only A Government Holds That Power. The Nature Of Governmental Action Is: Coercive Action. The Nature Of Political Power Is: The Power To Force Obedience Under Threat Of Physical Injury-the Threat Of Property Expropriation, Imprisonment, Or Death.

Censorship' Is A Term Pertaining Only To Governmental Action. No Private Action Is Censorship. No Private Individual Or Agency Can Silence A Man Or Suppress A Publication; Only The Government Can Do So. The Freedom Of Speech Of Private Individuals Includes The Right Not To Agree, Not To Listen And Not To Finance One's Own Antagonists.

Romantic Art Is The Fuel And The Spark Plug Of A Man's Soul. It's Task Is To Set A Soul On Fire And Never Let It Go Out.

If Some Men Are Entitled By Right To The Products Of The Work Of Others, It Means That Those Others Are Deprived Of Rights And Condemned To Slave Labor.

Romantic Art Is Always Stylized: The Better The Art, The Cleaner And More Attractive And Intelligent The Stylization.

Don't Bother To Examine A Folly-ask Yourself Only What It Accomplishes.

You Have Been The One Encounter In My Life That Can Never Be Repeated

If A Dedication Page Were To Precede The Total Of My Work, It Would Read: To The Glory Of Man.

Well, I Always Know What I Want. And When You Know What You Want--you Go Toward It. Sometimes You Go Very Fast, And Sometimes Only An Inch A Year. Perhaps You Feel Happier When You Go Fast. I Don't Know. I've Forgotten The Difference Long Ago, Because It Really Doesn't Matter, So Long As You Move.

She Fell Asleep, Lying There, Her Hand Clasping His. Her Last Awareness, Before She Surrendered The Responsibility Of Consciousness, Was The Sense Of An Enormous Void, The Void Of A City And Of A Continent, Where She Would Never Be Able To Find The Man Whom She Had No Right To Seek.

Honor Is Self-esteem Made Visible In Action.

[what For] Was The First Question He Asked About Any Activity Proposed To Him - And Nothing Would Make Him Act, If He Found No Valid Answer. He Flew Through The Days Of His Summer Month Like A Rocket, But If One Stopped Him In Mid-flight, He Could Always Name The Purpose Of His Every Random Moment. Two Things Were Impossible To Him: To Stand Still Or To Move Aimlessly.

From The Smallest Necessity To The Highest Religious Abstraction, From The Wheel To The Skyscraper, Everything We Are And Everything We Have Comes From One Attribute Of Man - The Function Of His Reasoning Mind.

To Hold An Unchanging Youth Is To Reach At The End, The Vision With Which One Started.

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.

Contrary To The Vulgar Belief That Men Are Motivated Primarily By Materialistic Considerations, We Now See The Capitalist System Being Discredited And Destroyed All Over The World, Even Though This System Has Given Men The Greatest Material Comforts.

The Degree Of A Country's Freedom Is The Degree Of Its Prosperity.

Ideas Are The Greatest And Most Crucially Practical Power On Earth.

We Can Evade Reality, But We Cannot Evade The Consequences Of Evading Reality

My Happiness Is Not The Means To Any End. It Is The End. It Is Its Own Goal. It Is Its Own Purpose.

If You Agree With Some Tenets Of Objectivism, But Disagree With Others, Do Not Call Yourself An Objectivist; Give Proper Authorship Credit For The Parts You Agree With

All Life Is A Purposeful Struggle, And Your Only Choice Is The Choice Of A Goal.

Consider The Reasons Which Make Us Certain That We Are Right, But Not The Fact That We Are Certain. If You Are Not Convinced, Ignore Our Certainty. Don't Be Tempted To Substitute Our Judgment For Your Own.

Morality Is A Code Of Black And White. When And If Men Attempt A Compromise, It Is Obvious Which Side Will Necessarily Lose And Which Will Necessarily Profit.

Black And White

Compromise Does Not Satisfy, But Dissatisfies Everybody; It Does Not Lead To Any General Fulfillment, But To General Frustration; Those Who Try To Become Everything To All People End Up By Not Being Anything To Anyone.

Love Is Not Self-sacrifice, But The Most Profound Assertion Of Your Own Needs And Values. It Is For Your Own Happiness That You Need The Person You Love, And That Is The Greatest Compliment, The Greatest Tribute You Can Pay To That Person.

Defiance, Not Obedience, Is The American's Answer To Overbearing Authority.

The Conservatives Want To Rule Man's Consciousness; The Liberals, His Body.

The Greatest Threat To Mankind And Civilization Is The Spread Of The Totalitarian Philosophy. Its Best Ally Is Not The Devotion Of Its Followers But The Confusion Of Its Enemies. To Fight It, We Must Understand It.

Paper Is A Check Drawn By Legal Looters Upon An Account Which Is Not Theirs: Upon The Virtue Of The Victims. Watch For The Day When It Bounces, Marked: 'account Overdrawn.'

She Sat Leaning Back In Her Chair, Looking Ahead, Knowing That He Was As Aware Of Her As She Was Of Him. She Found Pleasure In The Special Self-consciousness It Gave Her. When She Crossed Her Legs, When She Leaned On Her Arm Against The Window Sill, When She Brushed Her Hair Off Her Forehead - Every Movement Of Her Body Was Underscored By A Feeling The Unadmitted Words For Which Were: Is He Seeing It?

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).

I Am An Intransigent Atheist, Though Not A Militant One. This Means That I Am Not Fighting Against Religion - I Am Fighting For Reason.

She Knew That Even Pain Can Be Confessed, But To Confess Happiness Is To Stand Naked, Delivered To The Witness.

All Public Projects Are Mausoleums, Not Always In Shapes, But Always In Cost.

Professional Intellectuals Are The Voice Of A Culture And Are, Therefore, Its Leaders, Its Integrators And Its Bodyguards.

Im Waiting, For What, My Kind Of People, What Kind Is That, I Can Tell My Kind Of People By Their Faces, By Something In Their Faces.

God Help Us, Ma'am! Do You See What We Saw? We Saw That We'd Been Given A Law To Live By, A Moral Law, They Called It, Which Punished Those Who Observed It - For Observing It. The More You Tried To Live Up To It, The More You Suffered; The More You Cheated It, The Bigger Reward You Got. Your Honesty Was Like A Tool Left At The Mercy Of The Next Man's Dishonesty. The Honest Ones Paid, The Dishonest Collected. The Honest Lost, The Dishonest Won. How Long Could Men Stay Good Under This Sort Of A Law Of Goodness?

The Alleged Short-cut To Knowledge, Which Is Faith, Is Only A Short-circuit Destroying The Mind

Productiveness Is Your Acceptance Of Morality, Your Recognition Of The Fact That You Choose To Live-that Productive Work Is The Process By Which Man's Consciousness Controls His Existence, A Constant Process Of Acquiring Knowledge And Shaping Matter To Fit One's Purpose, Of Translating An Idea Into Physical Form, Of Remaking The Earth In The Image Of One's Values-that All Work Is Creative Work If Done By A Thinking Mind.

Do Not Keep Silent When Your Own Ideas And Values Are Being Attacked. If A Dictatorship Ever Comes To This Country, It Will Be By The Fault Of Those Who Keep Silent. We Are Still Free Enough To Speak. Do We Have Time? No One Can Tell.

I Don't Like People Who Speak Or Think In Terms Of Gaining Anybody's Confidence. If One's Actions Are Honest, One Does Not Need The Predated Confidence Of Others, Only Their Rational Perception. The Person Who Craves A Moral Blank Check Of That Kind, Has Dishonest Intentions, Whether He Admits It To Himself Or Not.

Anyone Who Fights For The Future, Lives In It Today.

I'm Working To Improve My Methods, And Every Hour I Save Is An Hour Added To My Life.

Emotions Are Inherent In Your Nature, But Their Content Is Dictated By Your Mind. Your Emotional Capacity Is An Empty Motor, And Your Values Are The Fuel With Which Your Mind Fills It.

Talent Alone Is Helpless Today. Any Success Requires Both Talent And Luck. And The 'luck' Has To Be Helped Along And Provided By Someone.

Do It First And Feel About It Afterwards.' - Dagny Taggart

Whoever Claims The Right To Redistribute The Wealth Produced By Others Is Claiming The Right To Treat Human Beings As Chattel.

But Neither Life Nor Happiness Can Be Achieved By The Pursuit Of Irrational Whims. Just As Man Is Free To Attempt To Survive In Any Random Manner, But Will Perish Unless He Lives As His Nature Requires, So He Is Free To Seek His Happiness In Any Mindless Fraud, But The Torture Of Frustration Is All He Will Find, Unless He Seeks The Happiness Proper To Man. The Purpose Of Morality Is To Teach You, Not To Suffer And Die, But To Enjoy Yourself And Live.

A Businessman Cannot Force You To Buy His Product; If He Makes A Mistake, He Suffers The Consequences; If He Fails, He Takes The Loss. If Bureaucrat Makes A Mistake, You Suffer The Consequences; If He Fails, He Passes The Loss On To You.

We Are On Strike Against The Doctrine That Life Is Guilt.

The Man Who Attempts To Live For Others Is A Dependent. He Is A Parasite In Motive And Makes Parasites Of Those He Serves.

Live For Others

Through All The Years That I Spent Formulating My Philosophical System, I Was Looking Desperately For “intelligent Agreement” Or At Least For “intelligent Disagreement.” I Found Neither. Today, I Am Not Looking For “intelligent Disagreement” Any Longer ... What I Am Looking For Is Intelligent Agreement.

Money Is Just A Tool. It Will Take You Anywhere You Want, But You Have To Be The Driver

Errors Of Knowledge Are Not Breaches Of Morality; No Proper Moral Code Can Demand Infallibility Or Omniscience.

Even If Smog Were A Risk To Human Life, We Must Remember That Life In Nature, Without Technology, Is Wholesale Death.

It Is Too Early To Feel Fear Of The Future When One Is Under 30, And Too Late After That. What I Mean Is That One Must Never Allow Fear To Become One's Permanent Sense Of Life. The Important Thing Is To Prepare Yourself Intellectually To Deal With Whatever Circumstances You May Encounter, Which Requires That You Define Your Values Fully, Clearly And Rationally -- And Never Betray Them.

The More You Learn, The More You Know That You Know Nothing.

The Purpose Of The Law Is Not To Prevent A Future Offense, But To Punish The One Actually Committed.

Do You Know That My Personal Crusade In Life (in The Philosophical Sense) Is Not Merely To Fight Collectivism, Nor To Fight Altruism? These Are Only Consequences, Effects, Not Causes. I Am Out After The Real Cause, The Real Root Of Evil On Earth The Irrational.

When Personal Judgment Is Inoperative (or Forbidden), Men's First Concern Is Not How To Choose, But How To Justify Their Choice

It's Not That I Don't Suffer, It's That I Know The Unimportance Of Suffering. I Know That Pain Is To Be Fought And Thrown Aside, Not To Be Accepted As Part Of One's Soul And As A Permanent Scar Across One's View Of Existence.

Through All The Darkness, Through All The Shame Of Which Men Are Capable, The Spirit Of Man Will Remain Alive On This Earth. It May Sleep, But It Will Awaken. It May Wear Chains, But It Will Break Through.

"judge Not, That Ye Be Not Judge"... Is An Abdication Of Moral Responsibility: It Is A Moral Blank Check One Gives To Others In Exchange For A Moral Blank Check One Expects For Oneself. There Is No Escape From The Fact That Men Have To Make Choices; So Long As Men Have To Make Choices, There Is No Escape From Moral Values; So Long As Moral Values Are At Stake, No Moral Neutrality Is Possible. To Abstain From Condemning A Torturer, Is To Become An Accesory To The Torture And Murder Of His Victims. The Moral Principle To Adopt... Is: "judge, And Be Prepared To Be Judged."

The Only Thing That Matters My Goal My Reward My Beginning My End Is The Work Itself. My Work Done My Way. A Private Personal Selfish Egotistical Motivation. That’s The Only Way I Function. That’s All I Am.

Self-esteem Is Reliance On Ones Power To Think.

We [entrepreneurs] Required That You Leave Us Free To Function -- Free To Think And Work As We Choose ... -- Free To Earn Our Own Profits And Make Our Own Fortunes ... Such Was The Price We Asked, Which You Chose To Reject As Too High.

She Had Learned, In The Slums Of Her Childhood, That Honest People Were Never Touchy About The Matter Of Being Trusted.

In That World, You'll Be Able To Rise In The Morning With The Spirit You Had Known In Your Childhood: That Spirit Of Eagerness, Adventure And Certainty Which Comes From Dealing With A Rational Universe.

It's Because...you See, If We Had Souls, Which We Haven't, And If Our Souls Met--yours And Mine--they'd Fight To The Death. But After They Had Torn Each Other To Pieces, To The Very Bottom, They'd See That They Had The Same Root.

I Got The Idea [for Anthem's Theme] In My School Days, In Soviet Russia, When I Heard All The Vicious Attacks On Individualism, And Asked Myself What The World Would Be Like If Men Lost The Word 'i.'

And Man Will Go On. Man, Not Men.

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.

Don't Worry. They're All Against Me. But I Have One Advantage: They Don't Know What They Want. I Do.

She Smiled. She Knew She Was Dying. But It Did Not Matter Any Longer. She Had Known Something Which No Human Words Could Ever Tell And She Knew It Now. She Had Been Awaiting It And She Felt It, As If It Had Been, As If She Had Lived It. Life Had Been, If Only Because She Had Known It Could Be, And She Felt It Now As A Hymn Without Sound, Deep Under The Little Whole That Dripped Red Drops Into The Snow, Deeper Than That From Which The Red Drops Came. A Moment Or An Eternity- Did It Matter? Life, Undefeated, Existed And Could Exist. She Smiled, Her Last Smile, To So Much That Had Been Possible.

Every Aspect Of Western Culture Needs A New Code Of Ethics - A Rational Ethics - As A Precondition Of Rebirth.

Western Culture

Government 'help' To Business Is Just As Disastrous As Government Persecution... The Only Way A Government Can Be Of Service To National Prosperity Is By Keeping Its Hands Off.

As We Gain Knowledge, We Do Not Become More Certain, We Become Certain Of More.

The Quickest Way To Kill The Human Spirit Is To Ask Someone To Do Mediocre Work.

Not Selfishness, But Precisely The Absence Of A Self. Look At Them. The Man Who Cheats And Lies, But Preserves A Respectable Front. He Knows Himself To Be Dishonest, But Others Think He’s Honest And He Derives His Self-respect From That, Second-hand. The Man Who Takes Credit For An Achievement Which Is Not His Own. He Knows Himself To Be Mediocre, But He’s Great In The Eyes Of Others.

When I Disagree With A Rational Man, I Let Reality Be Our Final Arbiter; If I Am Right, He Will Learn; If I Am Wrong, I Will; One Of Us Will Win, But Both Will Profit.

The Worst Evil That You Can Do, Psychologically, Is To Laugh At Yourself. That Means Spitting In Your Own Face.

Now You See, Dr. Stadler, You're Speaking As If This Book Were Addressing To A Thinking Audience. If It Were, One Would Have To Be Concerned With Such Matters As Accuracy, Validity, Logic And The Prestige Of Science. But It Isn't. It's Addressed To The Public.

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.

The Age Of The Skyscraper Is Gone. This Is The Age Of The Housing Project. Which Is Always A Prelude To The Age Of The Cave.

Integrity Is The Ability To Stand By An Idea.

I Think, Therefore I'll Think.

There Is A Fundamental Conviction Which Some People Never Acquire, Some Hold Only In Their Youth, And A Few Hold To The End Of Their Days-the Conviction That Ideas Matter . . . . That Ideas Matter Means That Knowledge Matters, That Truth Matters, That One's Mind Matters . . .

He Liked To Observe Emotions; They Were Like Red Lanterns Strung Along The Dark Unknown Of Another's Personality, Marking Vulnerable Points.

A Gun Is Not An Argument.

I Sat There Beside Him Till Morning - And As I Watched His Face In The Starlight, Then The First Ray Of The Sun On His Untroubled Forehead And Closed Eyelids, What I Experienced Was Not A Prayer, I Do Not Pray, But That State Of Spirit At Which A Prayer Is A Misguided Attempt: A Full, Confident, Affirming Self-dedication To My Love Of The Right, To The Certainty That The Right Would Win And That This Boy Would Have The Kind Of Future He Deserved... I Did Not Expect It To Be As Great As This - Or As Hard.

Compromise Now, Because You'll Have To Later, Anyway, Only Then You'll Have Gone Through Things You'll Wish You Hadn't.

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.

Only A Man Of Integrity Can Possess The Virtue Of Honesty, Since Only The Faking Of One’s Consciousness Can Permit The Faking Of Existence.

Worry Is A Waste Of Emotional Reserve".

There Is No Affirmation Without The One Who Affirms. In This Sense, Everything To Which You Grant Your Love Is Yours

He Walked, Groping For A Sentence That Hung In His Mind As An Empty Shape. He Could Neither Fill It Or Dismiss It.

A Rational Process Is A Moral Process.

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.

Love Is Our Response To Our Highest Values.

Man Holds These Rights [life, Liberty And Property], Not From The Collective Nor For The Collective, But Against The Collective - As A Barrier Which The Collective Cannot Cross... These Rights Are Man's Protection Against All Other Men.

A Man Who Seeks Escape From The Responsibility Of Supporting His Life By His Own Thought And Effort, And Wishes To Survive By Conquering, Ruling And Exploiting Others, Is Not An Individualist.

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.

Live A Life As A Monument To Your Soul.

The Man-worshipers, In My Sense Of The Term, Are Those Who See Man's Highest Potential And Strive To Actualize It. The Man-haters Are Those Who Regard Man As A Helpless, Depraved, Contemptible Creature-and Struggle Never To Let Him Discover Otherwise.

Believing In Fate Produces Fate. Believing In Freedom Will Create Infinite Possibilities.

The Only Power Any Government Has Is The Power To Crack Down On Criminals. Well, When There Aren't Enough Criminals, One Makes Them. One Declares So Many Things To Be A Crime That It Becomes Impossible For Men To Live Without Breaking Laws.

I Came Here To Say That I Do Not Recognize Anyone's Right To One Minute Of My Life.

In Order To Deal With Reality Successfully - To Pursue And Achieve The Values Which His Life Requires - Man Needs Self-esteem; He Needs To Be Confident Of His Efficacy And Worth.

Indiscriminate Tolerance And Indiscriminate Condemnation Are Not Two Opposites: They Are Two Variants Of The Same Evasion. To Declare That “everybody Is White” Or “everybody Is Black” Or “everybody Is Neither White Nor Black, But Gray,” Is Not A Moral Judgment, But An Escape From The Responsibility Of Moral Judgment.

If An Uncompromising Stand Is To Be Smeared As 'extremism,' Then That Smear Is Directed At Any Devotion To Values, Any Loyalty To Principles, Any Profound Conviction, Any Consistency, Any Steadfastness, Any Passion, Any Dedication To An Unbreached, Inviolate Truth -- Any Man Of Integrity.

I Take No Pride In Hopeless Longing; I Wouldn't Hold A Stillborn Aspiration. I'd Want To Have It, To Make It, To Live It.

I Am Interested In Politics So That One Day I Will Not Have To Be Interested In Politics.

Let Me Give You A Tip On A Clue To Men's Characters: The Man Who Damns Money Has Obtained It Dishonorably; The Man Who Respects It Has Earned It.

But I Don't Think Of You. - Howard Roark

There's Only One Passion In Most Artists More Violent Than Their Desire For Admiration: Their Fear Of Identifying The Nature Of Such Admiration As They Do Receive.

This Miracle Of Me Is Mine To Own And Keep, And Mine To Guard, And Mine To Use, And Mine To Kneel Before.

The Uncontested Absurdities Of Today Are The Accepted Slogans Of Tomorrow. They Come To Be Accepted By Degrees, By Dint Of Constant Pressure On One Side And Constant Retreat On The Other - Until One Day When They Are Suddenly Declared To Be The Country's Official Ideology.

Ask Yourself Whether The Dream Of Heaven And Greatness Should Be Waiting For Us In Our Graves - Or Whether It Should Be Ours Here And Now And On This Earth.

Every Man Builds His World In His Own Image; He Has The Power To Choose, But No Power To Escape The Necessity Of Choice. If He Abdicates His Power, He Abdicates The Status Of Man, And The Grinding Chaos Of The Irrational Is What He Achieves As His Sphere Of Existence—by His Own Choice.

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.

I Would Give The Greatest Sunset In The World For One Sight Of New York's Skyline. Particularly When One Can't See The Details. Just The Shapes. The Shapes And The Thought That Made Them. The Sky Over New York And The Will Of Man Made Visible. What Other Religion Do We Need?

Don't Ever Give Up What You Want In Life. The Struggle Is Worth It.

What Greater Wealth Is There Than To Own Your Life And To Spend It On Growing? Every Living Thing Must Grow. It Can't Stand Still. It Must Grow Or Perish.

Unjust Laws Have To Be Fought Ideologically; They Cannot Be Fought Or Corrected By Means Of Mere Disobedience And Futile Martyrdom.

Men Have Been Taught That Their First Concern Is To Relieve The Suffering Of Others. ... To Make That The Highest Test Of Virtue Is To Make Suffering The Most Important Part Of Life. Then Man Must Wish To See Others Suffer In Order That He May Be Virtuous. Such Is The Nature Of Altruism.

Suffering Of Others

I Refuse To Apologize For My Ability -- I Refuse To Apologize For My Success -- I Refuse To Apologize For My Money. If This Is Evil, Make The Most Of It.

Collectivism Answers: The Power Of Society Is Unlimited. Society May Make Any Laws It Wishes, And Force Them Upon Anyone In Any Manner It Wishes.

Money Is The Barometer Of A Society's Virtue.

Kira, The Highest Thing In Man Is Not His God. It's That In Him Which Knows The Reverence Due A God. And You, Kira, Are My Highest Reverence.

Don't Think Of Them Now. Never Think Of Pain Or Danger Or Enemies A Moment Longer Than Is Necessary To Fight Them. You're Here. It's Our Time And Our Life, Not Theirs. Don't Struggle Not To Be Happy. You Are." - John Gault

Ever Since Kant Divorced Reason From Reality, His Intellectual Descendants Have Been Diligently Widening The Breach.

Hank, This Is Great." "yes." He Said It Simply, Openly. There Was No Flattered Pleasure In His Voice, And No Modesty. This, She Knew, Was A Tribute To Her, The Rarest One Person Could Pay Another: The Tribute Of Feeling Free To Acknowledge One's Own Greatness, Knowing That It Is Understood.

Honesty Is The Recognition Of The Fact That The Unreal Is Unreal And Can Have No Value, That Neither Love Nor Fame Nor Cash Is A Value If Obtained By Fraud.

The Action Required To Sustain Human Life Is Primarily Intellectual; Everything Man Needs Has To Be Discovered By His Mind And Produced By His Effort.

Living In A Society, Instead Of On A Desert Island, Does Not Relieve A Man Of The Responsibility Of Supporting His Own Life.

Do Not Let The Hero In Your Soul Perish.

Every Major Horror Of History Was Committed In The Name Of An Altruistic Motive. Has Any Act Of Selfishness Ever Equalled The Carnage Perpetrated By Disciples Of Altruism.

She Had Won The Battle Against Her Memories. But One Form Of Torture Remained, Untouched By The Years, The Torture Of The Word "why?

You Love Only Those Who Deserve It.

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.

We Are On Strike Against Martyrdom—and Against The Moral Code That Demands It. We Are On Strike Against Those Who Believe That One Man Must Exist For The Sake Of Another. We Are On Strike Against The Morality Of Cannibals, Be It Practiced In Body Or In Spirit. We Will Not Deal With Men On Any Terms But Ours—and Our Terms Are A Moral Code Which Holds That Man Is An End In Himself And Not The Means To Any End Of Others.

He Despised Causeless Affection, Just As He Despised Unearned Wealth. They Professed To Love Him For Some Unknown Reason And They Ignored All The Things For Which He Could Wish To Be Loved.

Whose Steps Were A Restless Substitute For Flight.

Love Should Be Treated Like A Business Deal, But Every Business Deal Has Its Own Terms And Its Own Currency. And In Love, The Currency Is Virtue. You Love People Not For What You Do For Them Or What They Do For You. You Love Them For The Values, The Virtues, Which They Have Achieved In Their Own Character.

It Is My Eyes Which See, And The Sight Of My Eyes Grants Beauty To The Earth.

To Arrive At A Contradiction Is To Confess An Error In One's Thinking; To Maintain A Contradiction Is To Abdicate One's Mind And To Evict Oneself From The Realm Of Reality.

One's Own Independent Judgment Is The Means By Which One Must Choose One's Actions, But It Is Not A Moral Criterion Nor A Moral Validation; Only Reference To A Demonstrable Principle Can Validate One's Choices.

That Which Is Not Worth Contemplating In Life, Is Not Worth Recreating In Art.

The World Is Perishing From An Orgy Of Self-sacrificing.

My Morality, The Morality Of Reason, Is Contained In A Single Axiom: Existence Exists - And In A Single Choice: To Live.

The Sky Is Like A Black Sieve Pierced By Silver Drops That Tremble, Ready To Burst Through.

I Refuse To Accept As Guilt The Fact Of My Own Existence.

When I Die, I Hope To Go To Heaven, Whatever The Hell That Is.

The Attack On "selfishness" Is An Attack On Man's Self-esteem; To Surrender One, Is To Surrender The Other.

She Did Not Know The Nature Of Her Loneliness. The Only Words That Named It Were: This Is Not The World I Expected.

Let Us Destroy, But Don't Let Us Pretend That We Are Commiting An Act Of Virtue.

It's Such A Waste To Be Subtle And Vicious With People Who Don't Even Know That You're Being Subtle And Vicious

Because, You See, God - Whatever Anyone Chooses To Call God - Is One's Highest Conception Of The Highest Possible. And Whoever Places His Highest Conception Above His Own Possibility Thinks Very Little Of Himself And His Life. It's A Rare Gift, You Know, To Feel Reverence For Your Own Life And To Want The Best, The Greatest, The Highest Possible, Here, Now, For Your Very Own. To Imagine A Heaven And Then Not To Dream Of It, But To Demand It.

She Looked At The Crowd And She Felt Simultaneously Astonishment That They Should Stare At Her When This Event Was So Personally Her Own That No Communication About It Was Possible And A Sense Of Fitness That They Should Be Here That They Should Want To See It. Because The Sight Of An Achievement Was The Greatest Gift A Human Being Could Offer To Others.

In The Temple Of His Spirit, Each Man Is Alone.

Through All The Centuries Of The Worship Of The Mindless, Whatever Stagnation Humanity Chose To Endure, Whatever Brutality To Practice-it Was Only By The Grace Of The Men Who Perceived That Wheat Must Have Water In Order To Grow, That Stones Laid In A Curve Will Form An Arch, That Two And Two Make Four, That Love Is Not Served By Torture And Life Is Not Fed By Destruction-only By The Grace Of Those Men Did The Rest Of Them Learn To Experience Moments When They Caught The Spark Of Being Human.

Their Eyes Were Dark And Hard And Glowing, With No Fear In Them, No Kindness And No Guilt.

If You Write A Whole Line Of Zeroes, It's Still — Nothing.

Whether You Know The Shape Of A Pebble Or The Structure Of A Solar System, The Anxioms Remain The Same: That It Exists And That You Know It.

There Is Nothing Wrong In Helping Other People, If And When They Are Worthy Of The Help And You Can Afford To Help Them.

The Moral Cannibalism Of All Hedonist And Altruist Doctrines Lies In The Premise That The Happiness Of One Man Necessitates The Injury Of Another.

A Creative Man Is Motivated By The Desire To Achieve, Not By The Desire To Beat Others.

Every Period Ruled By Mystics Was An Era Of Stagnation And Want, When Most Men Were On Strike Against Existence.

There Can Be No Compromise On Moral Principles.

The Right To Vote Is A Consequence, Not A Primary Cause, Of A Free Social System - And Its Value Depends On The Constitutional Structure Implementing And Strictly Delimiting The Voters' Power; Unlimited Majority Rule Is An Instance Of The Principle Of Tyranny.

It Is Futile To Fight Against, If One Does Not Know What One Is Fighting For.

I Need No Warrant For Being, And No Word Of Sanction Upon My Being. I Am The Warrant And The Sanction.

There Is No Difference Between Communism And Socialism, Except In The Means Of Achieving The Same Ultimate End: Communism Proposes To Enslave Men By Force, Socialism - By Vote. It Is Merely The Difference Between Murder And Suicide.

It's Not About Who's Going To Let Me; It's About Who's Going To Stop Me.

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.

One Method Of Destroying A Concept Is By Diluting Its Meaning. Observe That By Ascribing Rights To The Unborn, I.e., The Nonliving, The Anti-abortionists Obliterate The Rights Of The Living.

What Is Morality, She Asked. Judgement To Distinguish Right And Wrong, Vision To See The Truth, And Courage To Act Upon It, Dedication To That Which Is Good, Integrity To Stand By The Good At Any Price.

I Am Not Morally Obligated To Care More For A Man Than He Cares For Himself.

Whatever Their Future, At The Dawn Of Their Lives, Men Seek A Noble Vision Of Man's Nature And Of Life's Potential.

Our Dearest One. Fear Nothing Of The Forest. There Is No Danger In Solitude. We Have No Need Of Our Brothers. Let Us Forget Their Good And Our Evil, Let Us Forget All Things Save That We Are Together And That There Is Joy As A Bond Between Us. Give Us Your Hand. Look Ahead. It Is Our Own World, Golden One, A Strange, Unknown World, But Our Own.

This God, This One Word: I.

Just As There Is No Such Thing As A Collective Or Racial Mind, So There Is No Such Thing As A Collective Or Racial Achievement. There Are Only Individual Minds And Individual Achievements-an D A Culture Is Not The Anonymous Product Of Undifferentiate D Masses, But The Sum Of The Intellectual Achievements Of Individual Men.

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