Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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.
Ayn Rand
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Rights
Monopoly
Force
Victims
Use
Legal
Government
Holds
Men
Victim
Threat
Disarmed
Physical
Legally
Dangerous
Potentially
More quotes by Ayn Rand
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.
Ayn Rand
Civilization does not have to perish. The brutes are winning only by default.
Ayn Rand
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.
Ayn Rand
If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.
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
Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Don't ignore your own desires.... Don't sacrifice them. Examine their cause. There is a limit to how much you should have to bear.
Ayn Rand
The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.
Ayn Rand
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.
Ayn Rand
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
Ayn Rand
You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live
Ayn Rand
Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.
Ayn Rand
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage-the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterologic al traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.
Ayn Rand
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.
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
and he said her name to fill the space of five years.
Ayn Rand
An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.
Ayn Rand
It only stands to reason that where 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.
Ayn Rand
And here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone the word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which will not die should we all perish in battle. 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
Ayn Rand
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.
Ayn Rand
And man will go on. Man, not men.
Ayn Rand