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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.
Ayn Rand
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Ayn Rand
Age: 77 †
Born: 1905
Born: February 2
Died: 1982
Died: March 6
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Philosopher
Playwright
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
St. Petersburg
Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum
Men
Government
Aren
Live
Crime
Declares
Wells
Becomes
Crack
Without
Impossible
Cracks
Well
Wisdom
Breaking
Enough
Law
Libertarian
Many
Makes
Criminals
Things
Power
Laws
More quotes by Ayn Rand
If the truth shall kill them, let them die.
Ayn Rand
When you have established that one alternative is good and the other is evil, there is no justification for the choice of a mixture. There is no justification ever for choosing any part of what you know to be evil.
Ayn Rand
Faith and force ... are corollaries: every period of history dominated by mysticism, was a period of statism, of dictatorship, of tyranny.
Ayn Rand
You're not sorry. You could've been here if you made the effort. But when did you ever make an effort for anybody but yourself? You're not interested in any of us or in anything we do. You think if you pay the bills, that's enough, don't you? Money! That's all you know. And all you give us is money. Have you even given us any time?
Ayn Rand
This god, this one word: I.
Ayn Rand
If a drought strikes them, animals perish--man builds irrigation canals if a flood strikes them, animals perish--man builds dams if a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish--man writes the Constitution of the United States.
Ayn Rand
There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
Ayn Rand
Great men can't be ruled.
Ayn Rand
The moral is the chosen, not the forced the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.
Ayn Rand
An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.
Ayn Rand
Most American men are repressors.
Ayn Rand
If you agree with some tenets of Objectivism, but disagree with others, do not call yourself an Objectivist give proper authorship credit for the parts you agree with
Ayn Rand
If men want to oppose war, it is statism that they must oppose.
Ayn Rand
As we gain knowledge, we do not become more certain, we become certain of more.
Ayn Rand
but their eyes were as cold blue glass buttons.
Ayn Rand
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.
Ayn Rand
I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.
Ayn Rand
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?
Ayn Rand
To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.
Ayn Rand
One can't love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name.
Ayn Rand