Quote

America's abundance was not created 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.

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
Men
Liberty
Economics
Industrialization
Public
Interests
Fortunes
Interest
Fortune
Sacrifices
Common
Private
Libertarianism
Free
Sacrifice
Pursued
Making
Created
Abundance
America
Genius
Libertarian
Good
Personal
Productive

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
The more neurotic and evasive a person is, the shorter the range of his interests.
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
A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue.
Ayn Rand
Image
Do not consider Collectivists as sincere but deluded idealists. The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal brutality is not idealistic, no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to do good by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
Ayn Rand
Image
Action without thought is mindlessness, and thought without action is hypocritical.
Ayn Rand
Image
That which is not worth contemplating in life, is not worth recreating in art.
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
It was the joy of admiration and of one's own ability, growing together.
Ayn Rand
Image
I got the idea [for Anthem's theme] in my school days, in Soviet Russia, when I heard all the vicious attacks on individualism, and asked myself what the world would be like if men lost the word 'I.'
Ayn Rand
Image
It's not about who's going to let me it's about who's going to stop me.
Ayn Rand
Image
It is futile to fight against, if one does not know what one is fighting for.
Ayn Rand
Image
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
Ayn Rand
Image
A man's rights are not violated by a private individual's refusal to deal with him.
Ayn Rand
Image
Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.
Ayn Rand
Image
I am opposed to all forms of control. I am for an absolute, laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy.
Ayn Rand
Image
An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.
Ayn Rand
Image
There is only one institution that can arrogate to itself the power legally to trade by means of rubber checks: the government. And it is the only institution that can mortgage your future without your knowledge or consent: government securities (and paper money) are promissory notes on future tax receipts, i.e., on your future production.
Ayn Rand
Image
The fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.
Ayn Rand
Image
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
Image
Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.
Ayn Rand