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The Man Of Authentic Self-confidence Is The Man Who Relies On The Judgment Of His Own Mind. Such A Man Is Not Malleable; He May Be Mistaken, He May Be Fooled In A Given Instance, But He Is Inflexible In Regard To The Absolutism Of Reality, I.e., In Seeking And Demanding Truth.

-Ayn Rand

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The Man Of Authentic

Ayn Rand

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The Man Of Authentic Self-confidence Is The Man Who Relies On The Judgment Of His Own Mind. Such A Man Is Not Malleable; He May Be Mistaken, He May Be Fooled In A Given Instance, But He Is Inflexible In Regard To The Absolutism Of Reality, I.e., In Seeking And Demanding Truth.

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Independence Is The Recognition Of The Fact That Yours Is The Responsibility Of Judgment And Nothing Can Help You Escape It-that No Substitute Can Do Your Thinking, As No Pinch-hitter Can Live Your Life-that The Vilest Form Of Self-abasement And Self-destruction Is The Subordination Of Your Mind To The Mind Of Another, The Acceptance Of An Authority Over Your Brain, The Acceptance Of His Assertions As Facts, His Say-so As Truth, His Edicts As Middle-man Between Your Consciousness And Your Existence.

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.

I Think That When In Doubt About The Truth Of An Issue, It's Safer And In Better Taste To Select The Least Numerous Of The Adversaries.

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

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.

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

Whenever Destroyers Appear Among Men, They Start By Destroying Money, For Money Is Men's Protection And The Base Of A Moral Existence. Destroyers Seize Gold And Leave To Its Owners A Counterfeit Pile Of Paper. This Kills All Objective Standards And Delivers Men Into The Arbitrary Power Of An Arbitrary Setter Of Values. Gold Was An Objective Value, An Equivalent Of Wealth Produced. Paper Is A Mortgage On Wealth That Does Not Exist, Backed By A Gun Aimed At Those Who Are Expected To Produce It.

Rationality Is The Recognition Of The Fact That Nothing Can Alter The Truth And Nothing Can Take Precedence Over That Act Of Perceiving It.

There Is Only One Source Of Authentic Self-confidence: Reason.

Self Confidence

The Only Proper Purpose Of A Government Is To Protect Man's Rights, Which Means: To Protect Him From Physical Violence.

I Have No Faith At All. I Only Hold Convictions.

Her Face Lay Still On The Air Under His Face.

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

People Think That A Liar Gains A Victory Over His Victim. What I’ve Learned Is That A Lie Is An Act Of Self-abdication, Because One Surrenders One’s Reality To The Person To Whom One Lies, Making That Person One’s Master, Condemning Oneself From Then On To Faking The Sort Of Reality That Person’s View Requires To Be Faked…the Man Who Lies To The World, Is The World’s Slave From Then On…there Are No White Lies, There Is Only The Blackest Of Destruction, And A White Lie Is The Blackest Of All.

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.

Place Nothing Above The Verdict Of Your Own Mind.

If The Truth Shall Kill Them, Let Them Die.

Words Of Wisdom

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Any Work Is Creative Work If Done By A Thinking Mind.

Productive Work

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.

When You Are Asked To Love Everybody Indiscriminately, That Is To Love People Without Any Standard, To Love Them Regardless Of Whether They Have Any Value Or Virtue, You Are Asked To Love Nobody.

Congress Shall Make No Law Abridging The Freedom Of Production And Trade.

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

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.

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.

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

...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.

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

Collectivism Is The Ancient Principle Of Savagery. ... Collectivism Is Not The 'new Order Of Tomorrow.' It Is The Order Of A Very Dark Yesterday.

Man's Unique Reward, However, Is That While Animals Survive By Adjusting Themselves To Their Background, Man Survives By Adjusting His Background To Himself.

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

To Achieve, You Need Thought. You Have To Know What You Are Doing And That's Real Power.

You'll Come Back, Because Yours Is An Error Of Knowledge, Not A Moral Failure, Not An Act Of Surrender To Evil, But Only The Last Act Of Being Victim To Your Own Virtue. We'll Wait For You And When You Come Back, You Will Have Discovered That There Need Never Be Any Conflict Among Your Desires, Nor So Tragic A Clash Of Values As The One You've Borne So Well.

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

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.

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

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.

Capitalism Is A Social System Based On The Recognition Of Individual Rights, Including Property Rights, In Which All Property Is Privately Owned.

A Viler Evil Than To Murder A Man, Is To Sell Him Suicide As An Act Of Virtue.

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.'

One Must Never Allow Oneself To Acquire An Exaggerated Sense Of One's Own Importance. There's No Necessity To Burden Oneself With Absolutes

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

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

Economic Power Is Exercised By Means Of A Positive, By Offering Men A Reward, An Incentive, A Payment, A Value; Political Power Is Exercised By Means Of A Negative, By The Threat Of Punishment, Injury, Imprisonment, Destruction. The Businessman's Tool Is Values; The Bureaucrat's Tool Is Fear.

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

There Is No Such Dichotomy As 'human Rights' Versus 'property Rights.' No Human Rights Can Exist Without Property Rights.

Face A Challenge And Find Joy In The Capacity To Meet It.

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

Collectivism Holds That The Individual Has No Rights, That His Life And Work Belong To The Group (to "society," To The Tribe, The State, The Nation) And That The Group May Sacrifice Him At Its Own Whim To Its Own Interests. The Only Way To Implement A Doctrine Of That Kind Is By Means Of Brute Force - And Statism Has Always Been The Poltical Corollary Of Collectivism.

And What, Incidentally, Do You Think Integrity Is? The Ability Not To Pick A Watch Out Of Your Neighbor's Pocket? No, It's Not As Easy As That. If That Were All, I'd Say Ninety-five Percent Of Humanity Were Honest, Upright Men. Only, As You Can See, They Aren't. Integrity Is The Ability To Stand By An Idea.

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.

What I Want You To Understand, Is The Full Evil Of Those Who Claim To Have Become Convinced That This Earth, By Its Nature, Is A Realm Of Malevolence Where The Good Has No Chance To Win. Let Them Check Their Premises. Let Them Check Their Standards Of Value. Let Them Check - Before They Grant Themselves The Unspeakable License Of Evil-as-necessity - Whether They Know What Is The Good And What Are The Conditions It Requires.

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.

I Don't Want To See You. I Don't Like You. I Don't Like Your Face. You Look Like An Insufferable Egotist. You're Impertinent. You're Too Sure Of Yourself. Twenty Years Ago I Would Have Punched Your Face With The Greatest Of Pleasure.

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?

The World You Desire Can Be Won, It Exists, It Is Real, It Is Possible, It Is Yours.

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.

If You Ask Me To Name The Proudest Distinction Of Americans, I Would Choose . . . The Fact That They Were The People Who Created The Phrase "to Make Money." No Other Language Or Nation Had Ever Used These Words Before. . . . Americans Were The First To Understand That Wealth Has To Be Created.

Without Property Rights, No Other Rights Are Possible.

Property Rights

Civilization Is The Process Of Setting Man Free From Men.

Progress Of Society

The Meaning Ascribed In Popular Usage To The Word 'selfishness' Is Not Merely Wrong: It Represents A Devastating Intellectual 'package-deal,' Which Is Responsible, More Than Any Other Single Factor, For The Arrested Moral Development Of Mankind.

Moral Development

She Started Off, Walking Fast, As If The Speed Of Her Steps Could Give Form To The Things She Felt.

Genius Is An Exaggeration Of Dimension. So Is Elephantiasis. Both May Be Only A Disease.

What You Think Is An Illusion Created By Your Glands, Your Emotions And, In The Last Analysis, By The Content Of Your Stomach. That Gray Matter You're So Proud Of Is Like A Mirror In An Amusement Park Which Transmits To You Nothing But Distorted Signals From Reality Forever Beyond Your Grasp.

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.

The Word Which Can Never Die On This Earth, For It Is The Heart Of It And The Meaning And The Glory. The Sacred Word: Ego.

I Stand Here On The Summit Of The Mountain. I Lift My Head And I Spread My Arms. This, My Body And Spirit, This Is The End Of The Quest. I Wished To Know The Meaning Of All Things. I Am The Meaning. I Wished To Find A Warrant For Being. I Need No Warrant For Being, And No Word Of Sanction Upon My Being. I Am The Warrant And The Sanction. Neither Am I The Means To Any End Others May Wish To Accomplish. I Am Not A Tool For Their Use. I Am Not A Servant Of Their Needs. I Am Not A Sacrifice On Their Alters.

Life Is The Reward Of Virtue. And Happiness Is The Goal And Reward Of Life.

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.

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.

The Romanticists Predominantly, Were Enemies Of Capitalism, Which They Regarded As A Prosaic, Materialistic, “petty Bourgeois” System — Never Realizing That It Was The Only System That Could Make Freedom, Individuality And The Pursuit Of Values Possible In Practice.

Laissez Faire Capitalism

Those Touchy Mediocrities Who Sit Trembling Lest Someone's Work Prove Greater Than Their Own - They Have No Inkling Of The Loneliness That Comes When You Reach The Top. The Loneliness For An Equal - For A Mind To Respect And An Achievement To Admire.

Why Is It Immoral For You To Desire, But Moral For Others To Do So? Why Is It Immoral To Produce A Value And Keep It, But Moral To Give It Away? And If It Is Not Moral For You To Keep A Value, Why Is It Moral For Others To Accept It? If You Are Selfless And Virtuous When You Give It, Are They Not Selfish And Vicious When They Take It?

It Does Not Matter That Only A Few In Each Generation Will Grasp And Achieve The Full Reality Of Man's Proper Stature-and The Rest Will Betray It. It Is Those Few That Move The World And Give Life Its Meaning-and It Is Those Few That I Have Always Sought To Address. The Rest Are No Concern Of Mine; It Is Not Me Or "the Fountainhead" That They Will Betray: It Is Their Own Souls.

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

I Would Step In The Way Of A Bullet If It Were Aimed At My Husband. It Is Not Self-sacrifice To Die Protecting That Which You Value: If The Value Is Great Enough, You Do Not Care To Exist Without It.

Have You Ever Felt The Longing For Someone You Could Admire? For Something, Not To Look Down At, But Up To?

Who Was It That Said He Needed A Fulcrum? Give Me An Unobstructed Right-of-way And I'll Show Them How To Move The Earth!

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

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.

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

It's True That There's No Such Thing As Free Will. We Can't Help What We Are Or What We Do. It's Not Our Fault. Nobody's To Blame For Anything. It's All In Your Background ... And Your Glands. If You're Good, That's No Achievement Of Yours - You Were Lucky In Your Glands. If You're Rotten, Nobody Should Punish You - You Were Unlucky, That's All.

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

You Can Ignore Reality, But You Can't Ignore The Consequences Of Ignoring Reality.

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.

Contrary To The Ecologists, Nature Does Not Stand Still And Does Not Maintain The Kind Of Equilibrium That Guarantees The Survival Of Any Particular Species - Least Of All The Survival Of Her Greatest And Most Fragile Product: Man.

Self-sacrifice? But It Is Precisely The Self That Cannot And Must Not Be Sacrificed.

Creation Comes Before Distribution -- Or There Will Be Nothing To Distribute.

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.

The Entire History Of Science Is A Progression Of Exploded Fallacies.

History Of Science

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

Selfishness Does Not Mean Only To Do Things For One's Self. One May Do Things, Affecting Others, For His Own Pleasure And Benefit. This Is Not Immoral, But The Highest Of Morality.

To Say 'i Love You' One Must First Be Able To Say The 'i.'

A Spirit, Too, Needs Fuel. It Can Run Dry.

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.

Reality Confronts Man With A Great Many Musts, But All Of Them Are Conditional The Formula Of Realistic Necessity Is You Must, If And The If Stands For Man's Choice

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.

Racism Is The Lowest, Most Crudely Primitive Form Of Collectivism.

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.

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.

I Think, Therefore I'll Think.

It Is Easier To Donate A Few Thousand To Charity And Think Oneself Noble Than To Base Self-respect On Personal Standards Of Personal Achievement.

What Is A Demanding Pleasure That Demands The Use Of Ones Mind! Not In The Sense Of Problem Solving, But In The Sense Of Exercising Discrimination, Judgment, Awareness.

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.

Degrees Do Not Matter... One Does Not Bargain About Inches Of Evil.

Some Day, The World Will Discover That, Without Thought, There Can Be No Love.

A Gun Is Not An Argument.

If Workers Struggle For Higher Wages, This Is Hailed As "social Gains", If Businessmen Struggle For Higher Profits, This Is Damned As "selfish Greed".

The Lust That Drives Others To Enslave An Empire, Had Become, In Her Limits, A Passion For Power Over Him. She Had Set Out To Break Him, As If, Unable To Equal His Value, She Could Surpass It By Destroying It, As If The Measure Of His Greatness Would Thus Become The Measure Of Hers, As If The Vandal Who Smashed A Statue Were Greater Than The Artist Who Had Made It, As If The Murderer Who Killed A Child Were Greater Than The Mother Who Had Given It Birth.

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

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.

Since Time Immemorial And Pre-industrial, 'greed' Has Been The Accusation Hurled At The Rich By The Concrete-bound Illiterates Who Were Unable To Conceive Of The Source Of Wealth Or Of The Motivation Of Those Who Produce It.

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

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

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.

Observe How Many People Evade, Rationalize And Drive Their Minds Into A State Of Blind Stupor, In Dread Of Discovering That Those They Deal With- Their "loved Ones" Or Friends Or Business Associates Or Political Rulers- Are Not Merely Mistaken, But Evil. Observe That This Dread Leads Them To Sanction, To Help And To Spread The Very Evil Whose Existence They Fear To Acknowledge.

We Have Only Two Sources Of Information About The Character Of The People Around Us: We Judge Them By What They Do And By What They Say (particularly The First).

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.

Kant Is The Most Evil Man In Mankind's History.

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.

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?

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

The Worst Wars Are Religious Wars Between Sects Of The Same Religion Or Civil Wars Between Brothers Of The Same Race.

If You Don't Know, The Thing To Do Is Not To Get Scared, But To Learn.

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

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

I Don't Build In Order To Have Clients. I Have Clients In Order To Build.

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.

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

Now Take A Human Body. Why Wouldn't You Like To See A Human Body With A Curling Tail With A Crest Of Ostrich Feathers At The End? And With Ears Shaped Like Acanthus Leaves? It Would Be Ornamental, You Know, Instead Of The Stark, Bare Ugliness We Have Now. Well, Why Don't You Like The Idea? Because It Would Be Useless And Pointless. Because The Beauty Of The Human Body Is That Is 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.

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.

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

The Pressure Disappeared With The First Word He Put On Paper. He Thought--while His Hand Moved Rapidly--what A Power There Was In Words; Later, For Those Who Heard Them, But First For The One Who Found Them; A Healing Power, A Solution, Like The Breaking Of A Barrier. He Thought, Perhaps The Basic Secret The Scientists Have Not Discovered, The First Fount Of Life, Is That Which Happens When A Thought Takes Shape In Words.

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

What Is Greatness? I Will Answer: It Is The Capacity To Live By The Three Fundamental Values Of John Galt: Reason, Purpose, Self-esteem.

They Had Rejected The Soul-body Dichotomy, With Its Two Corollaries: The Impotence Of Man's Mind And The Damnation Of This Earth; They Had Rejected The Doctrine Of Suffering As Man's Metaphysical Fate, They Proclaimed Man's Right To The Pursuit Of Happiness And Were Determined To Establish On Earth The Conditions Required For Man's Proper Existence, By The "unaided" Power Of Their Intellect.

Pursuit Of Happiness

In Architecture, Mediocrity Is More Glaringly Obvious Than In Other Lines - Because There's A Huge, Physical Object Such As A Building To Demonstrate It.

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.

Have You Noticed That The Imbecile Always Smiles? Man's First Frown Is The First Touch Of God On His Forehead. The Touch Of Thought.

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.

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.

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.'

Every Government Interference In The Economy Consists Of Giving An Unearned Benefit, Extorted By Force, To Some Men At The Expense Of Others.

Neither Life Nor Happiness Can Be Achieved By The Pursuit Of Irrational Whims.

The Majority Of Those Who Are Loosely Identified By The Term 'liberals' Are Afraid To Let Themselves Discover That What They Advocate Is Statism. They Want To Keep All The Advantages And Effects Of Capitalism, While Destroying The Cause, And They Want To Establish Statism Without Its Necessary Effects. They Do Not Want To Know Or To Admit That They Are The Champions Of Dictatorship And Slavery.

An Attempt To Achieve The Good By Force Is Like An Attempt To Provide A Man With A Picture Gallery At The Price Of Cutting Out His Eyes.

A Free Mind And A Free Market Are Corollaries.

To Achieve, You Need Thought

Style Is Not An End In Itself, It Is Only A Means To An End - The Means Of Telling A Story.

I Am Only Concerned With Politics So I May See The Day When I Don't Have To Be Concerned With Politics.

The Purpose Of Morality Is To Teach You, Not To Suffer And Die, But To Enjoy Yourself And Live.

A Society That Robs An Individual Of The Product Of His Effort, Or Enslaves Him, Or Attempts To Limit The Freedom Of His Mind, Or Compels Him To Act Against His Own Rational Judgment-a Society That Sets Up A Conflict Between Its Edicts And The Requirements Of Man’s Nature—is Not, Strictly Speaking, A Society, But A Mob Held Together By Institutionalized Gang-rule.

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

When I Listen To A Symphony I Love, I Don't Get From It What The Composer Got. His 'yes' Was Different From Mine. He Could Have No Concern For Mine And No Exact Conception Of It. That Answer Is Too Personal To Each Man. But In Giving Himself What He Wanted, He Gave Me A Great Experience.

Love Is Our Response To Our Highest Values.

Dominique As Gail Looks At Her "... There Is A Stage Of Worship Which Makes The Worshiper Himself An Object Of Reverence."

Great Men Can't Be Ruled.

To Say ‘i Love You’ One Must First Know How To Say The ‘i.’ The Meaning Of The ‘i’ Is An Independent, Self-sufficient Entity That Does Not Exist For The Sake Of Any Other Person. A Person Who Exists Only For The Sake Of His Loved One Is Not An Independent Entity, But A Spiritual Parasite. The Love Of A Parasite Is Worth Nothing.

Love Is Our Response To Our Highest Values. Love Is Self-enjoyment. The Noblest Love Is Born Out Of Admiration Of Another's Values.

Remember That Rights Are Moral Principles Which Define And Protect A Man's Freedom Of Action, But Impose No Obligations On Other Men.

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

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

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.

The Argument From Intimidation Is A Confession Of Intellectual Impotence.

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.

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

The Right To Life Means That A Man Has The Right To Support His Life By His Own Work (on Any Economic Level, As High As His Ability Will Carry Him); It Does Not Mean That Others Must Provide Him With The Necessities Of Life.

The Source Of The Government's Authority Is “the Consent Of The Governed.” This Means That The Government Is Not The Ruler, But The Servant Or Agent Of The Citizens; It Means That The Government As Such Has No Rights Except The Rights Delegated To It By The Citizens For A Specific Purpose.

Man Has Been Called A Rational Being, But Rationality Is A Matter Of Choice... Man Has To Be A Man-by Choice; He Has To Hold His Life As A Value-by Choice; He Has To Learn To Sustain It-by Choice; He Has To Discover The Values It Requires And Practice His Virtues By Choice. A Code Of Values Accepted By Choice Is A Code Of Morality.

Are You In A Universe Which Is Ruled By Natural Laws And, Therefore, Is Stable, Firm, Absolute - And Knowable? Or Are You In An Incomprehensible Chaos, A Realm Of Inexplicable Miracles, An Unpredictable, Unknowable Flux, Which Your Mind Is Impotent To Grasp? The Nature Of Your Actions - And Of Your Ambition - Will Be Different, According To Which Set Of Answers You Come To Accept.

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.

You'd Let The Whole World Perish Rather Than Soil That Immaculate Self Of Yours With A Single Spot Of Which You'd Have To Be Ashamed.

Worry Is A Waste Of Emotional Reserve".

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.

It's The Hardest Thing In The World - To Do What We Want. And It Takes The Greatest Kinds Of Courage.

Government Control Of The Economy, No Matter In Whose Behalf, Has Been The Source Of All The Evils In Our Industrial Society -- And The Solution Is Laissez-faire Capitalism, I.e., The Abolition Of Any And All Forms Of Intervention In Production And Trade, The Separation Of State And Economics, In The Same Way And For The Same Reasons As The Separation Of Church And State.

You Know What You Are Actually In Love With? Integrity. The Impossible. The Clean, Consistent, Reasonable, Self-faithful, The All-of-one-style, Like A Work Of Art.

About Mike The Construction Worker, Friend Of Roark: "he Worshipped Expertness Of Any Kind. He Loved His Work Passionately And Had No Tolerance For Anything Save For Other Single-track Devotions. He Was A Master In His Own Filed And Felt No Sympathy Except For Mastery. His View Of The World Was Simple: There Were The Able And There Were The Incompetent; He Was Not Concerned With The Latter."

Construction Workers

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.

Those Who Say Theory And Practice Are Two Unrelated Realms Are Fools In One And Scoundrels In The Other.

The Man At The Top Of The Intellectual Pyramid Contributes The Most To All Those Below Him, But Gets Nothing Except His Material Payment, Receiving No Intellectual Bonus From Others To Add To The Value Of His Time. The Man At The Bottom Who, Left To Himself, Would Starve In His Hopeless Ineptitude, Contributes Nothing To Those Above Him, But Receives The Bonus Of All Of Their Brains. Such Is The Nature Of The 'competition' Between The Strong And The Weak Of The Intellect. Such Is The Pattern Of 'exploitation' For Which You Have Damned The Strong.

A Society Without Intellectuals Is Like A Body Without A Head

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.

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!

I Owe Nothing To My Brothers, Nor Do I Gather Debts From Them. I Ask None To Live For Me, Nor Do I Live For Any Others. I Covet No Man's Soul, Nor Is My Soul Theirs To Covet.

The [u.s.] Constitution Is A Limitation On The Government, Not On Private Individuals ... It Does Not Prescribe The Conduct Of Private Individuals, Only The Conduct Of The Government ... It Is Not A Charter For Government Power, But A Charter Of The Citizen's Protection Against The Government.

I Worship Individuals For Their Highest Possibilities As Individuals And I Loathe Humanity For Its Failure To Live Up To These Possibilities.

Ask Yourself Why Totalitarian Dictatorships Find It Necessary To Pour Money And Effort Into Propaganda For Their Own Helpless, Chained, Gagged Slaves, Who Have No Means Of Protest Or Defense. The Answer Is That Even The Humblest Peasant Or The Lowest Savage Would Rise In Blind Rebellion, Were He To Realize That He Is Being Immolated, Not To Some Incomprehensible Noble Purpose, But To Plain, Naked Human Evil.

The Creed Of Sacrifice Is A Morality For The Immoral.

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.

All Work Is An Act Of Philosophy.

Aquinas Brought An Aristotelian View Of Reason Back Into European Culture, And Lighted The Way Toward The Renaissance.

You Can Avoid Reality, But You Cannot Avoid The Consequences Of Avoiding Reality.

The Only Purpose Of Education Is To Teach A Student How To Live His Life-by Developing His Mind And Equipping Him To Deal With Reality. The Training He Needs Is Theoretical, I.e., Conceptual. He Has To Be Taught To Think, To Understand, To Integrate, To Prove. He Has To Be Taught The Essentials Of The Knowledge Discovered In The Past-and He Has To Be Equipped To Acquire Further Knowledge By His Own Effort.

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

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