Quote

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.

Ayn Rand

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Become
Plant
Crop
May
Animals
Crops
Wells
Behavior
Learns
Well
Learning
Domestic
Believe
Control
Justified
Men
Animal
Plants
Literature
Civilized
Understand
Believing

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
The social system based on and consonant with the altruist morality-with the code of self-sacrifice- is socialism, in all or any of its variants: fascism, Nazism, communism. All of them treat man as a sacrificial animal to be immolated for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the society, the state.
Ayn Rand
Image
My greatest personal mistake is ever to allow a word or moment that “doesn’t count,” i.e., that I do not refer to my own basic principles. Every word, every action, every moment counts. (This is the pattern on which everybody makes mistakes [or] becomes irrational — not relating their one action or one conviction to another.
Ayn Rand
Image
She fell asleep, lying there, her hand clasping his. Her last awareness, before she surrendered the responsibility of consciousness, was the sense of an enormous void, the void of a city and of a continent, where she would never be able to find the man whom she had no right to seek.
Ayn Rand
Image
All public projects are mausoleums, not always in shapes, but always in cost.
Ayn Rand
Image
I am interested in politics only in order to secure and protect freedom.
Ayn Rand
Image
If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society-you are not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not. Only a slave acts on permission. A permission is not a right.
Ayn Rand
Image
There is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.
Ayn Rand
Image
Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.
Ayn Rand
Image
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.
Ayn Rand
Image
Those who say theory and practice are two unrelated realms are fools in one and scoundrels in the other.
Ayn Rand
Image
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
Image
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.
Ayn Rand
Image
The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence - to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
Ayn Rand
Image
What is kinder--to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility beyond their endurance--or to see them as they are, and accept it because it makes them comfortable?
Ayn Rand
Image
I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals.
Ayn Rand
Image
To say 'I love you' one must first be able to say the 'I.'
Ayn Rand
Image
In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them.
Ayn Rand
Image
Many words have been granted me, and some are wise, and some are false, but only three are holy: I will it!
Ayn Rand
Image
The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work.
Ayn Rand
Image
There are two side to every issue.
Ayn Rand