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

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgement and nothing can help you escape it - that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life.
Ayn Rand
Image
I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself.
Ayn Rand
Image
Live a life as a monument to your soul.
Ayn Rand
Image
Collectivism, as an intellectual power and a moral ideal, is dead. But freedom and individualism, and their political expression, capitalism, have not yet been discovered.
Ayn Rand
Image
Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burnt at the stake he'd taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived and he lifted darkness from the face of the Earth.
Ayn Rand
Image
Creation comes before distribution -- or there will be nothing to distribute.
Ayn Rand
Image
But what man does out of despair, is not necessarily a key to his character. I have always thought that the real key is in that which he seeks for his enjoyment.
Ayn Rand
Image
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.
Ayn Rand
Image
An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.
Ayn Rand
Image
The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind.
Ayn Rand
Image
Men have died in torture chambers, on the stake, in concentration camps, in front of firing squads, rather than renounce their convictions. The appeaser renounces his under the pressure of a frown on a vacant face.
Ayn Rand
Image
All the evils, abuses, and iniquities, popularly ascribed to businessmen and to capitalism, were not caused by an unregulated economy or by a free market, but by government intervention into the economy.
Ayn Rand
Image
I feel that others live up to me, if they want me.
Ayn Rand
Image
Action without thought is mindlessness, and thought without action is hypocritical.
Ayn Rand
Image
I agree that [marriage] should be treated like a business deal. But every business deal has to have its own terms and its own kind of currency.
Ayn Rand
Image
A building has integrity, just as a man and just as seldom! It must be true to its own idea, have its own form, and serve its own purpose!
Ayn Rand
Image
The conservatives want to rule man's consciousness the liberals, his body.
Ayn Rand
Image
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
Image
In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads.
Ayn Rand
Image
There are two side to every issue.
Ayn Rand