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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

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People Don't Want To

Ayn Rand

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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.

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A Mystic Is A Man Who Treats His Feelings As Tools Of Cognition.

The Concept Of Free Competition Enforced By Law Is A Grotesque Contradiction In Terms.

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

Guilt Is Altruism's Stock In Trade, And The Inducing Of Guilt Is Its Only Means Of Self-perpetuati On.

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

Why Had We Let It Go? Why Had We Both Been Condemned...to An Exile Among Dreary Strangers Who Had Made Us Give Up All Desire For Rest, For Friendship, For The Sound Of Human Voices? Could I Now Reclaim A Single Hour Spent Talking To My Brother, Philip, And Give It To Ken Daggart? Who Made It Our Duty To Accept, As The Only Reward For Our Work, The Gray Torture Of Pretending Love For Those Who Roused Nothing But Contempt?

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. A Bureaucrat, Forces You To Obey His Decisions, Whether You Agree With Him Or Not... If He Makes A Mistake, You Suffer The Consequences; If He Fails, He Passes The Loss On To You, In The Form Of Heavier Taxes.

I Am. I Think. I Will.

The Men Who Are Not Interested In Philosophy Need It Most Urgently; They Are Most Helplessly In Its Power.

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

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

Western Culture

I Am Opposed To All Forms Of Control; I Am For An Absolute Laissez Faire, Free, Unregulated Economy. I Am For The Separation Of The State And Economics, Just As We Had Separation Of State And Church, Which Led To Peaceful Coexistence Among Different Religions...so The Same Applies To Economics. If You Separate The Government From Economics, If You Do Not Regulate Production And Trade, You Will Have Peaceful Cooperation, And Harmony And Justice Among Men.

The Three Of Them Set Out Every Morning On Adventures Of Their Own Kind. Once, An Elderly Professor Of Literature, Mrs. Taggart's Friend, Saw Them On Top Of A Pile In A Junk Yard, Dismantling The Carcass Of An Automobile. He Stopped, Shook His Head And Said To Francisco, 'a Young Man Of Your Position Ought To Spend His Time In Libraries, Absorbing The Culture Of The World.' 'what Do You Think I'm Doing?' Asked Francisco.

When Man Learns To Understand And Control His Own Behavior As Well As He Is Learning To Understand And Control The Behavior Of Crop Plants And Domestic Animals, He May Be Justified In Believing That He Has Become Civilized.

She Was Incapable Of Love For Any Object Not Of Her Own Choice And She Resented Anyone's Demand For It.

America's Founding Ideal Was The Principle Of Individual Rights. Nothing More - And Nothing Less.

When The Common Good Of A Society Is Regarded As Something Apart From And Superior To The Individual Good Of Its Members, It Means That The Good Of Some Men Takes Precedence Over The Good Of Others, With Those Others Consigned To The Status Of Sacrificial Animals.

Freedom Comes From Seeing The Ignorance Of Your Critics And Discovering The Emptiness Of Their Virtue.

Capitalism Is Not The System Of The Past; It Is The System Of The Future -- If Mankind Is To Have A Future

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?

A Man's Sexual Choice Is The Result And The Sum Of His Fundamental Convictions.... He Will Always Be Attracted To The Woman Who Reflects His Deepest Vision Of Himself, The Woman Whose Surrender Permits Him To Experience A Sense Of Self-esteem. The Man Who Is Proudly Certain Of His Own Value, Will Want The Highest Type Of Woman He Can Find, The Woman He Admires, The Strongest, The Hardest To Conquer--because Only The Possession Of A Heroine Will Give Him The Sense Of An Achievement.

He Stepped To The Window And Pointed To The Skyscrapers Of The City. He Said That We Had To Extinguish The Lights Of The World, And When We Would See The Lights Of New York Go Out, We Would Know That Our Job Was Done.

One Can't Love Man Without Hating Most Of The Creatures Who Pretend To Bear His Name.

The Most Depraved Type Of Human Being ... (is) The Man Without A Purpose.

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

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.

The Founding Fathers Were Neither Passive, Death-worshipin G Mystics Nor Mindless, Power-seeking Looters; As A Political Group They Were A Phenomenon Unprecedented In History: They Were Thinkers Who Were Also Men Of Action.

The Men Who Are Not Interested In Philosophy Need It Most Urgently: They Are Most Helplessly In Its Power. The Men Who Are Not Interested In Philosophy Absorb Its Principles From The Cultural Atmosphere Around Them-from Schools, Colleges, Books, Magazines, Newspapers, Movies, Television, Etc. Who Sets The Tone Of A Culture? A Small Handful Of Men: The Philosophers. Others Follow Their Lead, Either By Conviction Or By Default.

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.

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

Sacrifice Is The Surrender Of That Which You Value In Favor Of Which You Dont

It Is Not Fools That I Seek To Address.

Collectivism Requires Self-sacrifice, The Subordination Of One's Interests To Those Of Others.

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.

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Ideas, In A Free Society, Are Not A Crime- And Neither Can They Serve As The Justification Of A Crime.

An Inventor Is A Man Who Asks 'why?' Of The Universe And Lets Nothing Stand Between The Answer And His Mind.

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Are My Characters Copies Of People In Real Life? ... Don't Ever Believe The Stories About Authors Putting People Into Novels. That Idea Is A Kind Of Joke On Both Authors And Readers. All The Readers Believe That Authors Do It. All The Authors Know That It Can't Be Done.

When One Acts On Pity Against Justice, It Is The Good Whom One Punishes For The Sake Of The Evil; When One Saves The Guilty From Suffering, It Is The Innocent Whom One Forces To Suffer. There Is No Escape From Justice, Nothing Can Be Unearned And Unpaid For In The Universe, Neither In Matter Nor In Spirit—and If The Guilty Do Not Pay, Then The Innocent Have To Pay It.

There Are Two Side To Every Issue.

Andrei, Did You Like The Opera?" "not Particularly." "andrei, Do You See What You're Missing?" "i Don't Think I Do, Kira. It's All Rather Silly. And Useless." "can't You Enjoy Things That Are Useless, Merely Because They Are Beautiful?" "no. But I Enjoyed It." "the Music?" "no. The Way You Listened To It.

Nobody Stays Here By Faking Reality In Any Manner Whatever.

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

Independence Is The Recognition Of The Fact That Yours Is The Responsibility Of Judgement And Nothing Can Help You Escape It - That No Substitute Can Do Your Thinking, As No Pinch-hitter Can Live Your Life.

Pleasure Is Nought But Virtue's Gayer Name-- I Wrong Her Still, I Rate Her Worth Too Low: Virtue The Root, And Pleasure Is The Flow'r.

Have You Ever Felt A Potential Love For Someone? Like, You Don't Actually Love Them And You Know You Don't, But You Know You Could. You Realise That You Could Easily Fall In Love With Them. It's Almost Like The Bud Of A Flower, Ready To Blossom But It's Just Not Quite There Yet. And You Like Them A Lot, You Really Do. You Think About Them Often, But You Don't Love Them. You Could, Though. You Know You Could.

Falling In Love

Never Ask People. Not About Your Work. Don't You Know What You Want? How Can You Stand It, Not To Know?

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

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

Civilization Is The Process Of Setting Man Free From Men.

Progress Of Society

In A Fully Free Society, Taxation-or, To Be Exact, Payment For Governmental Services-would Be Voluntary.

There Are Four Characteristics Which Brand A Country Unmistakably As A Dictatorship: One-party Rule, Executions Without Trial Or With A Mock Trial For Political Offenses, The Nationalization Or Expropriation Of Private Property, And Censorship. A Country Guilty Of These Outrages Forfeits Any Moral Prerogatives, Any Claim To National Rights Or Sovereignty, And Becomes An Outlaw.

If One Doesn't Respect Oneself One Can Have Neither Love Nor Respect For Others.

Man Needs Knowledge In Order To Survive, And Only Reason Can Achieve It; Men Who Reject The Responsibility Of Thought And Reason, Can Exist Only As Parasites On The Thinking Of Others.

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.

The ' Pleasure' Of Being Drunk Is Obviously The Pleasure Of Escaping From The Responsibility Of Consciousness.

What I Am Fighting Is The Idea That Charity Is A Moral Duty And A Primary Virtue.

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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.

Man Cannot Survive Except Through His Mind. He Comes On Earth Unarmed. His Brain Is His Only Weapon. Animals Obtain Food By Force. Man Had No Claws, No Fangs, No Horns, No Great Strength Of Muscle. He Must Plant His Food Or Hunt It. To Plant, He Needs A Process Of Thought. To Hunt, He Needs Weapons,and To Make Weapons - A Process Of Thought. From This Simplest Necessity To The Highest Religious Abstraction, From The Wheel To The Skyscraper, Everything We Are And We Have Comes From A Single Attribute Of Man -the Function Of His Reasoning Mind.

There Is A Fundamental Moral Difference Between A Man Who Sees His Self-interest In Production And A Man Who Sees It In Robbery. The Evil Of A Robber Does Not Lie In The Fact That He Pursues His Own Interests, But In What He Regards As To His Own Interest; Not In The Fact That He Pursues His Values, But In What He Chose To Value; Not In The Fact That He Wants To Live, But In The Fact That He Wants To Live On A Subhuman Level.

But What Man Does Out Of Despair, Is Not Necessarily A Key To His Character. I Have Always Thought That The Real Key Is In That Which He Seeks For His Enjoyment.

Definitions Are The Guardians Of Rationality, The First Line Of Defense Against The Chaos Of Mental Disintegration.

It Is The Basic, Metaphysical Fact Of Man's Nature -- The Connection Between His Survival And His Use Of Reason -- That Capitalism Recognizes And Protects.

And Questions Give Us No Rest. We Know Not Why Our Curse Makes Us Seek We Know Not What, Ever And Ever. But We Cannot Resist It. It Whispers To Us That There Are Great Things On This Earth Of Ours, And That We Can Know Them If We Try, And That We Must Know Them. We Ask, Why Must We Know, But It Has No Answer To Give Us. We Must Know That We May Know.

I Can't Compete And When I Do, The Rules Of Engagement Change In The Middle Of The Game. I'll Let The Powers That Be Vanquish Themselves And Return In Three To Five Years To Sift Through The Remains.

Your Eyes Are As A Flame, But Our Brothers Have Neither Hope Nor Fire. Your Mouth Is Cut Of Granite, But Our Brothers Are Soft And Humble. Your Head Is High, But Our Brothers Cringe. You Walk, But Our Brothers Crawl. We Wish To Be Damned With You, Rather Than Blessed With All Our Brothers. Do As You Please With Us, But Do Not Send Us Away From You.

The Conservatives See Man As A Body Freely Roaming The Earth, Building Sand Piles Or Factories - With An Electronic Computer Inside His Skull, Controlled From Washington. The Liberals See Man As A Soul Freewheeling To The Farthest Reaches Of The Universe - But Wearing Chains From Nose To Toes When He Crosses The Street To Buy A Loaf Of Bread.

It's Good To Suffer. Dont Complain. Bear, Bow, Accept - And Be Grateful That God Has Made You Suffer. For This Makes You Better Than The People Who Are Laughing And Happy.

I Started My Life With A Single Absolute: That The World Was Mine To Shape In The Image Of My Highest Values And Never To Be Given Up To A Lesser Standard, No Matter How Long Or Hard The Struggle.

I'm Not Brave Enough To Be A Coward; I See The Consequences Too Clearly.

Happiness Is Not To Be Achieved At The Command Of Emotional Whims.

Every Form Of Happiness If One, Every Desire Is Driven By The Same Motor--by Our Love For A Single Value, For The Highest Potentiality Of Our Own Existence--and Every Achievement Is An Expression Of It.

Happiness Is That State Of Consciousness Which Proceeds From The Achievement Of One's Values.

What Objectivity And The Study Of Philosophy Requires Is Not An 'open Mind,' But An Active Mind - A Mind Able And Eagerly Willing To Examine Ideas, But To Examine Them Criticially.

My Philosophy, In Essence, Is The Concept Of Man As A Heroic Being, With His Own Happiness As The Moral Purpose Of His Life, With Productive Achievement As His Noblest Activity, And Reason As His Only Absolute.

Under The Antitrust Laws, A Man Becomes A Criminal From The Moment He Goes Into Business, No Matter What He Does. If He Complies With One Of These Laws, He Faces Criminal Prosecution Under Several Others. For Instance, If He Charges Prices Which Some Bureaucrats Judge As Too High, He Can Be Prosecuted For Monopoly Or For A Successful 'intent To Monopolize'; If He Charges Prices Lower Than Those Of His Competitors, He Can Be Prosecuted For 'unfair Competition' Or 'restraint Of Trade'; And If He Charges The Same Prices As His Competitors, He Can Be Prosecuted For 'collusion' Or 'conspiracy.'

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.

Just As Man's Physical Existence Was Liberated When He Grasped That 'nature, To Be Commanded, Must Be Obeyed', So His Consciousness Will Be Liberated When Grasps That Nature, To Be Apprehended, Must Be Obeyed - That The Rules Of Cognition Must Be Derived From The Nature Of Existence And The Nature, The Identity, Of His Cognitive Faculty.

He Wanted Her. He Knew Where To Find Her. He Waited. It Amused Him To Wait, Because He Knew That The Waiting Was Unbearable To Her. He Knew That His Absence Bound Her To Him In A Manner More Complete And Humiliating Than His Presence Could Enforce. He Was Giving Her Time To Attempt An Escape, In Order To Let Her Know Her Own Helplessness When He Chose To See Her Again.

If A Man Speculates On What 'society' Should Do For The Poor, He Accepts Thereby The Collectivist Premise That Men's Lives Belong To Society And That He, As A Member Of Society, Has The Right To Dispose Of Them...that Psychological Confession Reveals The Enormity Of The Extent To Which Altruism Erodes Men's Capacity To Grasp The Concept Of Rights Or The Value Of An Individual Life.

Great Men Can't Be Ruled.

The Cult Of Moral Grayness Is A Revolt Against Moral Values.

Identify The Dominant Philosophy Of A Society And You Can Predict Its Future.

To Be The Kind Of Writer You Want To Be, You Must First Be The Kind Of Thinker You Want To Be.

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.

Live A Life As A Monument To Your Soul.

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.

There’s Nothing As Significant As A Human Face. Nor As Eloquent. We Can Never Really Know Another Person, Except By Our First Glance At Him. Because, In That Glance, We Know Everything. Even Though We’re Not Always Wise Enough To Unravel The Knowledge.

Altruism Declares That Any Action Taken For The Benefit Of Others Is Good, And Any Action Taken For One's Own Benefit Is Evil. Thus The Beneficiary Of An Action Is The Only Criterion Of Moral Value - And So Long As That Beneficiary Is Anybody Other Than Oneself, Anything Goes.

The Goal Of The 'liberals' - As It Emerges From The Record Of The Past Decades - Was To Smuggle This Country Into Welfare Statism By Means Of Single, Concrete, Specific Measures, Enlarging The Power Of The Government A Step At A Time, Never Permitting These Steps To Be Summed Up Into Principles, Never Permitting Their Direction To Be Identified Or The Basic Issue To Be Named. Thus, Statism Was To Come, Not By Vote Or By Violence, But By Slow Rot - By A Long Process Of Evasion And Epistemological Corruption, Leading To A Fait Accompli.

If The Humanists Wish To Be Champions Of Reason, They Should Consider The Following: Just As They Would Not Admit Mystics Into Their Camp, Since No Rational Discussion Is Possible With Men Who Substitute Supernatural Revelations For Rational Evidence-so They Cannot Admit Advocates Of Force Into Their Camp, Because No Rational Discussion Or Agreement Is Possible With Men Who Substitute Guns For Rational Persuasion.

If A Man Wants Love He Should Correct His Weaknesses, Or His Flaws, And He May Deserve It. But He Cannot Expect The Unearned, Either In Love Or In Money; Either In Matter Or In Spirit.

If It's Worth Doing, It's Worth Overdoing.

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

No Man Can Use His Brain To Think For Another.

Learn To Distinguish The Difference Between Errors Of Knowledge And Breaches Of Morality

There Is A Level Of Cowardice Lower Than That Of The Conformist: The Fashionable Non-conformist.

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.

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

For They Have Nothing To Fight Me With, Save The Brute Force Of Their Numbers. I Have My Mind.

Do Not Lose Your Knowledge That Man's Proper Estate Is An Upright Posture, An Intransigent Mind, And A Step That Travels Unlimited Roads.

When One Turns From Reason To Faith, When One Rejects The Absolutism Of Reality, One Undercuts The Absolutism Of One's Consciousness - And One's Mind Becomes An Organ One Cannot Trust Any Longer. It Becomes What The Mystics Claim It To Be: A Tool Of Distortion.

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.

Sacrifice Does Not Mean The Rejection Of The Worthless, But Of The Precious

I Am Interested In Politics Only In Order To Secure And Protect Freedom.

The Truth Is Not For All Men, But Only For Those Who Seek It.

...if Men Are To Be Ruled, Then The Enemy Is Reason.

Money Is Only A Tool. It Will Take You Wherever You Wish, But It Will Not Replace You As The Driver.

It's The Person Who Would Sell His Soul For A Nickel, Who Is Loudest In Proclaiming His Hatred Of Money.... Let Me Give You A Tip On Men's Characters: The Man Who Damns Money Has Obtained It Dishonorably; The Man Who Respects It Has Earned It. Run For Your Life From Any Man Who Tells You That Money Is Evil. That Sentence Is The...bell Of An Approaching Looter.

Because The Beauty Of The Human Body Is That It Hasn't A Single Muscle Which Doesn't Serve Its Purpose; That There's Not A Line Wasted; That Every Detail Of It Fits One Idea, The Idea Of A Man And The Life Of A Man.

It Is A Free Market That Makes Monopolies Impossible.

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.

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.

Man Is The Only Living Species That Has The Power To Act As His Own Destroyer - And That Is The Way He Has Acted Through Most Of His History.

It Is A Policeman’s Duty To Retrieve Stolen Property And Return It To Its Owners. But When Robbery Becomes The Purpose Of The Law, And The Policeman’s Duty Becomes, Not Protection, But The Plunder Of Property - Then It Is An Outlaw Who Has To Become A Policeman.

They Talked About Nothing In Particular, Sentences That Had Meaning Only In The Sound Of The Voices, In Warm Gaiety, In The Ease Of Complete Relaxation.

The Truly And Deliberately Evil Men Are A Very Small Minority; It Is The Appeaser Who Unleashes Them On Mankind.

Self-esteem Is Reliance On One's Power To Think... The Man Of Authentic Self-confidence Is The Man Who Relies On The Judgment Of His Own Mind.

Self Confidence

Ideas Cannot Be Fought Except By Means Of Better Ideas. The Battle Consists, Not Of Opposing, But Of Exposing; Not Of Denouncing, But Of Disproving; Not Of Evading, But Of Boldly Proclaiming A Full, Consistent, And Radical Alternative.

Whatever May Be Open To Disagreement, There Is One Act Of Evil That May Not, The Act That No Man May Commit Against Others And No Man May Sanction Or Forgive. So Long As Men Desire To Live Together, No Man May Initiate—do You Hear Me? No Man May Start—the Use Of Physical Force Against Others.

The Only Power Any Government Has Is The Power To Crack Down On Criminals. Well, When There Aren

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

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

I Can Say-not As A Patriotic Bromide, But With Full Knowledge Of The Necessary Metaphysical, Epistemological , Ethical, Political And Esthetic Roots-that The United States Of America Is The Greatest, The Noblest And, In Its Original Founding Principles, The Only Moral Country In The History Of The World.

Show Me Your Achievement, And The Knowledge Will Give Me Courage For Mine.

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

You Don't Know How Hard I've Tried To Be Left Standing All By Myself.

The Best, Most Natural Dialogue Is Usually Written As If The Writer Is Listening To Dictation. You Might Get Stuck On Any Particular Point And Have To Question Yourself; But Normally, Dialogue Writes Itself.

A “collective” Mind Does Not Exist. It Is Merely The Sum Of Endless Numbers Of Individual Minds. If We Have An Endless Number Of Individual Minds Who Are Weak, Meek, Submissive And Impotent – Who Renounce Their Creative Supremacy For The Sake Of The “whole” And Accept Humbly That The “whole’s” Verdict – We Don’t Get A Collective Super-brain. We Get Only The Weak, Meek, Submissive And Impotent Collective Mind.

The Question Of Whether One Alleges The Superiority Or Inferiority Of Any Given Race Is Irrelevant; Racism Has Only One Psychological Root: The Racist's Sense Of His Own Inferiority.

A Man's Ego Is The Fountainhead Of Human Progress.

Man's Mind Is His Basic Tool Of Survival.

Look, Gail." Roark Got Up, Reached Out, Tore A Thick Branch Off A Tree, Held It In Both Hands, One Fist Closed At Each End; Then, His Wrists And Knuckles Tensed Against The Resistance, He Bent The Branch Slowly Into An Arc. "now I Can Make What I Want Of It: A Bow, A Spear, A Cane, A Railing. That's The Meaning Of Life." "your Strength?" "your Work." He Tossed The Branch Aside. "the Material The Earth Offers You And What You Make Of It . . .

The Symbol Of All Relationships Among Such Men, The Moral Symbol Of Respect For Human Beings, Is The Trader. We, Who Live By Values, Not By Loot, Are Traders, Both In Matter And In Spirit. A Trader Is A Man Who Earns What He Gets And Does Not Give Or Take The Undeserved.

Creation Comes Before Distribution - Or There Will Be Nothing To Distribute. The Need Of The Creator Comes Before The Need Of Any Possible Beneficiary. Yet We Are Taught To Admire The Second-hander Who Dispenses Gifts He Has Not Produced Above The Man Who Made The Gifts Possible. We Praise An Act Of Charity. We Shrug At An Act Of Achievement.

Politically, The Goal Of Today’s Dominant Trend Is Statism. Philosophically , The Goal Is The Obliteration Of Reason; Psychologically , It Is The Erosion Of Ambition. The Political Goal Presupposes The Two Others. The Human Characteristic Required By Statism Is Docility, Which Is The Product Of Hopelessness And Intellectual Stagnation. Thinking Men Cannot Be Ruled; Ambitious Men Do Not Stagnate.

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

In All Proper Relationships There Is No Sacrifice Of Anyone To Anyone. An Architect Needs Clients, But He Does Not Subordinate His Work To Their Wishes. They Need Him, But They Do Not Order A House Just To Give Him Commission. Men Exchange Their Work By Free, Mutual Consent To Mutual Advantage When Their Personal Interests Agree And They Both Desire The Exchange.

Contradictions Do Not Exist. Whenever You Think You Are Facing A Contradiction, Check Your Premises. You Will Find That One Of Them Is Wrong.

I Cannot Stand Tolstoy, And Reading Him Was The Most Boring Literary Duty I Ever Had To Perform, His Philosophy And His Sense Of Life Are Not Merely Mistaken, But Evil, And Yet, From A Purely Literary Viewpoint, On His Own Terms, I Have To Evaluate Him As A Good Writer.

In Order To Live, Man Must Act; In Order To Act, He Must Make Choices; In Order To Make Choices, He Must Define A Code Of Values; In Order To Define A Code Of Values, He Must Know What He Is And Where He Is – I.e. He Must Know His Own Nature (including His Means Of Knowledge) And The Nature Of The Universe In Which He Acts – I.e. He Needs Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Which Means: Philosophy. He Cannot Escape From This Need; His Only Alternative Is Whether The Philosophy Guiding Him Is To Be Chosen By His Mind Or By Chance.

If It Were True That Men Could Achieve Their Good By Means Of Turning Some Men Into Sacrificial Animals, And ... If I Were Asked To Serve The Interests Of Society Apart From, Above And Against My Own I Would Refuse... I Would Fight In The Full Confidence Of The Justice Of My Battle And Of A Living Being's Right To Exist.

The Essential Characteristic Of Socialism Is The Denial Of Individual Property Rights.

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

I Shall Choose Friends Among Men, But Neither Slaves Nor Masters. And I Shall Choose Only Such As Please Me, And Them I Shall Love And Respect, But Neither Command Nor Obey. And We Shall Join Our Hands When We Wish, Or Walk Alone When We So Desire.

Man’s Rights Can Be Violated Only By The Use Of Physical Force. It Is Only By Means Of Physical Force That One Man Can Deprive Another Of His Life, Or Enslave Him, Or Rob Him, Or Prevent Him From Pursuing His Own Goals, Or Compel Him To Act Against His Own Rational Judgment.

Now Look At Me! Take A Good Look! I Was Born And I Knew I Was Alive And I Knew What I Wanted. What Do You Think Is Alive In Me? Why Do You Think I'm Alive? Because I Have A Stomach And Eat And Digest The Food? Because I Breathe And Work And Produce More Food To Digest? Or Because I Know What I Want, And That Something Which Knows How To Want—isn't That Life Itself? And Who—in This Damned Universe—who Can Tell Me Why I Should Live For Anything But For That Which I Want?

There Are No Evil Thoughts Except One; The Refusal To Think.

Freedom (n.): To Ask Nothing. To Expect Nothing. To Depend On Nothing.

Independent Women

[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.

It Is One's Own Personal, Selfish Happiness That One Seeks, Earns, And Derives From Love.

The Fact That A Man Has No Claim On Others ... Does Not Preclude Or Prohibit Good Will Among Men And Does Not Make It Immoral To Offer Or To Accept Voluntary, Non-sacrificial Assistance.

Abortion Is A Moral Right-which Should Be Left To The Sole Discretion Of The Woman Involved; Morally, Nothing Other Than Her Wish In The Matter Is To Be Considered. Who Can Conceivably Have The Right To Dictate To Her What Disposition She Is To Make Of The Functions Of Her Body?

There Is No Such Thing As A Lousy Job - Only Lousy Men Who Don't Care To Do It.

Economics Departments Are Dominated By Marxism, Which Is Taken Straight Or On The Rocks, In The Form Of Keynesianism.

Everything Has Strings Leading To Everything Else. We're All So Tied Together. We're All In A Net, The Net Is Waiting, And We're Pushed Into It By One Single Desire. You Want A Thing And It's Precious To You. Do You Know Who Is Standing Ready To Tear It Out Of Your Hands? You Can't Know, It May Be So Involved And So Far Away, But Someone Is Ready, And You're Afraid Of Them All. And You Cringe And You Crawl And You Beg And You Accept Them--just So They'll Let You Keep It. And Look At Whom You Come To Accept.

Most American Men Are Repressors.

In The Name Of The Values That Keep You Alive, Do Not Let Your Vision Of Man Be Distorted By The Ugly, The Cowardly, The Mindless In Those Who Have Never Achieved His Title. Do Not Lose Your Knowledge That Man’s Proper Estate Is An Upright Posture, An Intransigent Mind And A Step That Travels Unlimited Roads.

The Evasion Of Responsibility Is The Major Cause Of Most Peoples Frustrations And Defeats.

Is It Advisable To Spread Out All The Conveniences Of Culture Before People To Whom A Few Steps Up A Stair To A Library Is A Sufficient Deterrent From Reading?

Art Is A Selective Re-creation Of Reality According To An Artists Metaphysical Value Judgments.

Action Without Thought Is Mindlessness, And Thought Without Action Is Hypocritical.

A Culture Is Not The Anonymous Product Of Undifferentiate D Masses, But The Sum Of The Intellectual Achievements Of Individual Men.

I Want To Be Prepared To Claim The Greatest Virtue Of All - That I Was A Man Who Made Money

Life Is A Value To Be Bought And Thinking Is The Only Coin Noble Enough To Buy 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.

You Have Chosen To Risk Your Lives For The Defense Of This Country. I Will Not Insult You By Saying That You Are Dedicated To Selfless Service--it Is Not A Virtue In My Morality. In My Morality, The Defense Of One's Country Means That A Man Is Personally Unwilling To Live As The Conquered Slave Of Any Enemy, Foreign Or Domestic. This Is An Enormous Virtue.

Emotions Are Not Tools Of Cognition. They Tell You Nothing About The Nature Of Reality.

A Building Has Integrity, Just As A Man And Just As Seldom! It Must Be True To Its Own Idea, Have Its Own Form, And Serve Its Own Purpose!

But Aristotle's Philosophy Was The Intellect's Declaration Of Independence.

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.

Self Respect Is Something That Can't Be Killed. The Worst Thing Is To Kill A Man's Pretense At It.

There Is No Transgression Blacker Than To Do Or Think Alone.

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

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.

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

The Writer Who Develops A Beautiful Style, But Has Nothing To Say, Represents A Kind Of Arrested Esthetic Development; He Is Like A Pianist Who Acquires A Brilliant Technique By Playing Finger-exercises, But Never Gives A Concert.

Science Was Born As A Result And Consequence Of Philosophy; It Cannot Survive Without A Philosophical Base. If Philosophy Perishes, Science Will Be Next To Go.

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

You Don't Love Causes. You Don't Love Everybody Indiscriminately. You Love Only Those Who Deserve It.

... Reason Accepts No Commandments.

To Discuss Evil In A Manner Implying Neutrality, Is To Sanction It.

You Will Follow Me, If We Are What We Are, You And I, If We Live, If The World Exists, If You Know The Meaning Of This Moment And Can't Let It Slip By, As Others Let It Slip, Into The Senselessness Of The Unwilled And Unreached.

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.

This Was Solidarity. The Debutante Having Her Toenails Pedicured - The Housewife Buying Carrots From A Pushcart - The Bookkeeper Who Had Wanted To Be A Pianist, But Has The Excuse Of A Sister To Support - The Businessman Who Hated His Business - The Worker Who Hated His Work - The Intellectual Who Hated Everybody - All Were United As Brothers In The Luxury Of Common Anger That Cured Boredom And Took Them Out Of Themselves, And They Knew Well Enough What A Blessing It Was To Be Taken Out Of Themselves.

One Of The Most Destructive Anti-concepts In The History Of Moral Philosophy Is The Term 'duty.

One Of The Methods Used By Statists To Destroy Capitalism Consists In Establishing Controls That Tie A Given Industry Hand And Foot, Making It Unable To Solve Its Problems, Then Declaring That Freedom Has Failed And Stronger Controls Are Necessary.

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.

...only The Pleasure Which Proceeds From A Rational Value Judgement Can Be Regarded As Moral, Pleasure, As Such, Is Not A Guide To Action Nor A Standard Of Morality.

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?

She Did Not Know What It Was About Him That Had Always Made Her Want To See Him Broken.

If You Surrender Everything To The Government And Give It Total Power To Plan The Whole Economy, This Will Not Guarantee Your Economic Security, But It Will Guarantee The Descent Of The Entire Nation To A Level Of Miserable Poverty--as The Practical Results Of Every Totalitarian Economy, Communist Or Fascist, Have Demonstrated.

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

I Guard My Treasures: My Thoughts, My Will, My Freedom. And The Greatest Of These Is Freedom.

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