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...if men are to be ruled, then the enemy is reason.
Ayn Rand
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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
Ruled
Enemy
Reason
Men
More quotes by Ayn Rand
Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion. To declare that “everybody is white” or “everybody is black” or “everybody is neither white nor black, but gray,” is not a moral judgment, but an escape from the responsibility of moral judgment.
Ayn Rand
In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.
Ayn Rand
When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.
Ayn Rand
Capitalism and altruism are incompatible they are philosophical opposites they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society.
Ayn Rand
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
I want to be prepared to claim the greatest virtue of all - that I was a man who made money
Ayn Rand
Namely, if I am challenging the base of all these institutions, I'm challenging the moral code of altruism. The precept that man's moral duty is to live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others. Which is the present day morality.
Ayn Rand
She's a writer. The kind of writer who wouldn't be published outside. She believes that when one deals with words, one deals with the mind.
Ayn Rand
Do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement.
Ayn Rand
If you want to save capitalism there is only one type of argument that you should adopt, the only one that has ever won in any moral issue: the argument from self-esteem. Check your premises, convince yourself of the rightness of your cause, then fight for capitalism with full, moral certainty.
Ayn Rand
My greatest personal mistake is ever to allow a word or moment that “doesn’t count,” i.e., that I do not refer to my own basic principles. Every word, every action, every moment counts. (This is the pattern on which everybody makes mistakes [or] becomes irrational — not relating their one action or one conviction to another.
Ayn Rand
Most American men are repressors.
Ayn Rand
Emotions are inherent in your nature, but their content is dictated by your mind. Your emotional capacity is an empty motor, and your values are the fuel with which your mind fills it.
Ayn Rand
To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.
Ayn Rand
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
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.
Ayn Rand
The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is the conquest of men.
Ayn Rand
I guard my treasures: my thoughts, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.
Ayn Rand
Sacrifice is the surrender of that which you value in favor of which you dont
Ayn Rand
The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system - and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.
Ayn Rand
