Quote

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

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
Intellectual
Expression
Dead
Collectivism
Moral
Individualism
Freedom
Ideal
Political
Discovered
Power
Capitalism
Ideals

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality-not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.
Ayn Rand
Image
Do not set out to write with your eyes on the box office. It can't be done.
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
Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy it cannot survive without a philosophical base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go.
Ayn Rand
Image
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
Ayn Rand
Image
One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor.
Ayn Rand
Image
There is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.
Ayn Rand
Image
Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.
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
Romantic art is always stylized: the better the art, the cleaner and more attractive and intelligent the stylization.
Ayn Rand
Image
Serenity comes from the ability to say “Yes” to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say “No” to the wrong choices made by others.
Ayn Rand
Image
There's nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.
Ayn Rand
Image
Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. Virtue is the act by which one aims and/or keeps it.
Ayn Rand
Image
The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way.
Ayn Rand
Image
I am opposed to all forms of control. I am for an absolute, laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy.
Ayn Rand
Image
If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as social gains, if businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as selfish greed.
Ayn Rand
Image
Let me be the child in the story and declare that the Emperor is naked — or that America is culturally bankrupt.
Ayn Rand
Image
I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.
Ayn Rand
Image
The end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.
Ayn Rand
Image
Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Don't ignore your own desires.... Don't sacrifice them. Examine their cause. There is a limit to how much you should have to bear.
Ayn Rand