Quote

A man's rights are not violated by a private individual's refusal to deal with him.

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
Individualism
Private
Deal
Deals
Rights
Individual
Men
Violated
Refusal

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
It's true that there's no such thing as free will. We can't help what we are or what we do. It's not our fault. Nobody's to blame for anything. It's all in your background ... and your glands. If you're good, that's no achievement of yours - you were lucky in your glands. If you're rotten, nobody should punish you - you were unlucky, that's all.
Ayn Rand
Image
He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it or dismiss it.
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
Living in a society, instead of on a desert island, does not relieve a man of the responsibility of supporting his own life.
Ayn Rand
Image
Pleasure is nought but virtue's gayer name-- I wrong her still, I rate her worth too low: Virtue the root, and pleasure is the flow'r.
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
Humor is not an unconditional virtue its moral character depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue to laugh at the good, is a hideous vice. Too often, humor is used as the camouflage of moral cowardice.
Ayn Rand
Image
To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?
Ayn Rand
Image
It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust but to know.
Ayn Rand
Image
If a dedication page were to precede the total of my work, it would read: To the glory of Man.
Ayn Rand
Image
A 'whim' is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause.
Ayn Rand
Image
Place nothing above the verdict of your own mind.
Ayn Rand
Image
When you force a man to act against his own choice and judgment, it's his thinking that you want him to suspend.
Ayn Rand
Image
In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions and interests dictate.
Ayn Rand
Image
What objectivity and the study of philosophy requires is not an 'open mind,' but an active mind - a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them criticially.
Ayn Rand
Image
whose steps were a restless substitute for flight.
Ayn Rand
Image
The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.
Ayn Rand
Image
Her face lay still on the air under his face.
Ayn Rand
Image
Morally, the promise of an impossible “right” to economic security is an infamous attempt to abrogate the concept of rights. It can and does mean only one thing: a promise to enslave the men who produce, for the benefit of those who don’t.
Ayn Rand
Image
Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras whenever it fell, so did mankind.
Ayn Rand