Quote

Capitalism has been called a system of greed—yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of.

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
Called
Height
Collectivist
Living
Greed
Tribal
Ever
Capitalism
Heights
Standards
Poorest
Raised
Conceive
Citizens
Gang
Equal
Begun
System
Standard

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection, and the base of a moral existence.
Ayn Rand
Image
Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality
Ayn Rand
Image
Do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement.
Ayn Rand
Image
Rights are not a matter of numbers - and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.
Ayn Rand
Image
An individualist is a man who says: 'I will not run anyone's life - nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule or be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone - nor sacrifice anyone to myself.'
Ayn Rand
Image
A reader has to be concerned only with the end result unless he chooses to analyze it, he does not have to know by what means that result was achieved-but it is my job to know.
Ayn Rand
Image
Collectivism answers: The power of society is unlimited. Society may make any laws it wishes, and force them upon anyone in any manner it wishes.
Ayn Rand
Image
Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you? He answered, Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one.
Ayn Rand
Image
What do I think of President Reagan? The best answer to give would be: I don't think of him. And the more I see, the less I think.
Ayn Rand
Image
A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.
Ayn Rand
Image
The mind is the attribute of man. When man is born, he comes into existence with only one weapon with him--The reasoning mind.
Ayn Rand
Image
Every honest man lives for himself. Every man worth calling a man lives for himself. The one who doesn't - doesn't live at all.
Ayn Rand
Image
Ah, there's nothing like tea in the afternoon. When the British Empire collapses, historians will find that it had made but two invaluable contributions to civilization - this tea ritual and the detective novel.
Ayn Rand
Image
Did it ever occur to you, that there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires - if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical?
Ayn Rand
Image
The worst evil that you can do, psychologically, is to laugh at yourself. That means spitting in your own face.
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
Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through.
Ayn Rand
Image
Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
Ayn Rand
Image
The degree of a country's freedom is the degree of its prosperity.
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