27/08/2024
Quotations by and about Ayn Rand
On Herself
I seek to provide men—or those who care to think—with an integrated, consistent and rational view of life.
Pl***oy interview with Ayn Rand
I am not brave enough to be a coward. I see the consequences too clearly.
On Reality and Knowledge
[Objectivism] begins with the axiom that existence exists, which means that an objective reality exists independent of any perceiver or of the perceiver’s emotions, feelings, wishes, hopes or fears. Objectivism holds that reason is man’s only means of perceiving reality and his only guide to action. By reason, I mean the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses.
Pl***oy interview with Ayn Rand
On the Use of Reason
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.
Letters of Ayn Rand, quoted in Jennifer Burns,
[W]hile animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.
For the New Intellectual
Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.
Atlas Shrugged
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think.
Atlas Shrugged
On Ethics
Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics—a rational ethics—as a precondition of rebirth.
“What is Romanticism?” in The Romantic Manifesto
All that which proceeds from man’s independent ego is good.
All that which proceeds from man’s dependence upon men is evil.
The Fountainhead
On Value
Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.
For the New Intellectual
The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.
The Virtue of Selfishness
On Altruism
[W]here there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.
The Fountainhead
The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another.
The Virtue of Selfishness
The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.
Atlas Shrugged
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.
Pl***oy interview with Ayn Rand
On Self-Interest/Egoism
I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Atlas Shrugged
An individualist is a man who says: I’ll not run anyone’s life—nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule nor be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone—nor sacrifice anyone to myself.
Textbook of Americanism
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.
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.
Journals of Ayn Rand
On Virtues
A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.
The Fountainhead
The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose—a productive purpose.
Pl***oy interview with Ayn Rand
The virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one’s only source of knowledge, one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide to action. . . . It means one’s acceptance of the responsibility of forming one’s own judgments and of living by the work of one’s own mind (which is the virtue of Independence). It means that one must never sacrifice one’s convictions to the opinions or wishes of others (which is the virtue of Integrity)—that one must never attempt to fake reality in any manner (which is the virtue of Honesty)—that one must never seek or grant the unearned and undeserved, neither in matter nor in spirit (which is the virtue of Justice).
“The Objectivist Ethics” in The Virtue of Selfishness
On Happiness
Hedonism is the doctrine which holds that the good is whatever gives you pleasure and, therefore, pleasure is the standard of morality. Objectivism holds that the good must be defined by a rational standard of value.
Pl***oy interview with Ayn Rand
Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.
For the New Intellectual
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.
Atlas Shrugged
On Emotion
What you feel tells you nothing about the facts; it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts. Emotions are the result of your value judgments; they are caused by your basic premises, which you may hold consciously or subconsciously, which may be right or wrong.
Pl***oy interview with Ayn Rand
On Politics and Economics
On Individual Rights
Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.
The Virtue of Selfishness 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).
The Virtue of Selfishness
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.
The Virtue of Selfishness
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.
The Virtue of Selfishness
A crime is the violation of the right(s) of other men by force (or fraud). It is only the initiation of physical force against others—i.e., the recourse to violence—that can be classified as a crime in a free society (as distinguished from a civil wrong). Ideas, in a free society, are not a crime—and neither can they serve as the justification of a crime.
The New Left
Never initiate the use of force against another man. Never let his use of force against you remain unanswered by force.
Journals of Ayn Rand
Observe, in politics, that the term extremism has become a synonym of evil, regardless of the content of the issue (the evil is not what you are extreme about, but that you are extreme—i.e., consistent).
The Virtue of Selfishness
Rights are not a matter of numbers—and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
On Property Rights and Creativity
Just as man can’t exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property.
Atlas Shrugged
The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary.
The Fountainhead
The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite’s concern is the conquest of men.
The Fountainhead
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.
For the New Intellectual
On the Role of the State
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.
The Virtue of Selfishness
There are only two means by which men can deal with one another: guns or logic. Force or persuasion. Those who know that they cannot win by means of logic, have always resorted to guns.
Philosophy: Who Needs It
The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, and to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.
Atlas Shrugged
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.
Philosophy: Who Needs It
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
Not only the post office, but streets, roads, and above all, schools, should all be privately owned and privately run.
I advocate the separation of state and economics. The government should be concerned only with those issues which involve the use of force. This means: the police, the armed services, and the law courts to settle disputes among men. Nothing else.
Pl***oy interview with Ayn Rand
On Capitalism
A free mind and a free economy are corollaries. One can’t exist without the other. The dollar sign, as the symbol of the currency of a free country, is the symbol of the free mind.
Pl***oy interview with Ayn Rand
Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.
For the New Intellectual
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 Fountainhead
Capitalism was the only system in history where wealth was not acquired by looting, but by production, not by force, but by trade, the only system that stood for man’s right to his own mind, to his work, to his life, to his happiness, to himself.
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions and interests dictate.
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
The economic value of a man’s work is determined, on a free market, by a single principle: by the voluntary consent of those who are willing to trade him their work or products in return.
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
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.
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
What we have today is not a capitalist society, but a mixed economy—that is, a mixture of freedom and controls, which, by the presently dominant trend, is moving toward dictatorship. The action in Atlas Shrugged takes place at a time when society has reached the stage of dictatorship. When and if this happens, that will be the time to go on strike, but not until then.
Pl***oy interview with Ayn Rand
On Money
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.
Atlas Shrugged
So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what the root of money is? 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?
Atlas Shrugged
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. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another—their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
Atlas Shrugged
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.
Atlas Shrugged
On Prosperity
America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance—and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
No politico-economic system in history has ever proved its value so eloquently or has benefited mankind so greatly as capitalism
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
When I say capitalism, I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism—with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.
The Virtue of Selfishness
Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
On Aesthetics
The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendor that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach.
The Virtue of Selfishness
Art is a projection of the artist’s fundamental view of man and of existence. Since most artists do not develop an independent philosophy of their own, they absorb, consciously or subconsciously, the dominant philosophical influences of their time. Most of today’s literature is a faithful reflection of today’s philosophy—and look at it!
Pl***oy interview with Ayn Rand
On Heroism
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists . . . it is real . . . it is possible . . . it’s yours.
Atlas Shrugged
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.
Atlas Shrugged
The motive and purpose of my writing is the projection of an ideal man. The portrayal of a moral ideal, as my ultimate literary goal, as an end in itself—to which any didactic, intellectual or philosophical values contained in a novel are only the means. . . . My purpose, first cause and prime mover is the portrayal of Howard Roark or John Galt or Hank Rearden or Francisco d’Anconia as an end in himself—not as a means to any further end.
The Romantic Manifesto
The fallacy in Objectivism is the belief that absolute knowledge and final Truths are attainable through reason, and therefore there can be absolute right and wrong knowledge, and absolute moral and immoral thought and action.
For Objectivists, once a principle has been discovered through reason to be true, that is the end of the discussion. If you disagree with the principle, then your reasoning is flawed. If your reasoning is flawed it can be corrected, but if it is not, you remain flawed and do not belong in the group. Excommunication is the final step for such unreformed heretics.
Michael Shermer, “The Unlikeliest Cult in History,” Skeptic She was a wholly original thinker, sharply analytical, strong-willed, highly principled, and very insistent on rationality as the highest value.
Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence
