Quote

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion...th at in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing-you may know that your society is doomed.

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
Nothing
Trading
Need
Consent
Done
Doomed
Needs
Permission
Men
Produce
Society
Order
Obtain
May
Compulsion

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
The more you learn, the more you know that you know nothing.
Ayn Rand
Image
You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated
Ayn Rand
Image
Civilization does not have to perish. The brutes are winning only by default.
Ayn Rand
Image
Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue.
Ayn Rand
Image
You're not sorry. You could've been here if you made the effort. But when did you ever make an effort for anybody but yourself? You're not interested in any of us or in anything we do. You think if you pay the bills, that's enough, don't you? Money! That's all you know. And all you give us is money. Have you even given us any time?
Ayn Rand
Image
To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.
Ayn Rand
Image
You love only those who deserve it.
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
Reality confronts man with a great many musts, but all of them are conditional the formula of realistic necessity is You must, if and the if stands for man's choice
Ayn Rand
Image
An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man's value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man's reason and his emotions
Ayn Rand
Image
She knew that she could not have reached this white serenity except as the sum of all the colors, of all the violence she had known.
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
To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.
Ayn Rand
Image
It stands to reason that if sacrifices are being given, somebody is collecting sacrifices.
Ayn Rand
Image
Reason can be fought with reason. How are you going to fight the unreasonable? The trouble with you, my dear, and with most people, is that you don’t have sufficient respect for the senseless. The senseless is the major factor in our lives. You have no chance if it is your enemy.
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
Never ask people about your work.
Ayn Rand
Image
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
Ayn Rand
Image
Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values the bureaucrat's tool is fear.
Ayn Rand
Image
A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.
Ayn Rand