 Q. What do you think of the Libertarian Party? AR: I’d rather vote for Bob Hope, the Marx Brothers, or Jerry Lewis. I don’t think they’re as funny as Professor Hospers and the Libertarian Party. If, at a time like this, John Hospers takes ten votes away from Nixon (which I doubt he’ll do), it would be a moral crime. I don’t care about Nixon, and I care even less about Hospers. But this is no time to engage in publicity seeking, which all these crank political parties are doing. If you want to spread your ideas, do it through education. But don’t run for President—or even dogcatcher—if you’re going to help McGovern.
Ayn Rand
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/NewsDiscussions/2126_2.shtml#52
The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it.
Ayn Rand
"The Only Path to Tomorrow" Readers Digest, Jan 1944
"If he advocates the right political principles for the wrong metaphysical reasons, the contradiction is his problem, not ours."
Ayn Rand
Common law is good in the way witchdoctors were once good: some of their discoveries were a primitive form of medicine, and to that extent achieved something. But once a science of medicine is established, you don't return to witchdoctors. Similarly, common law established--by tradition or inertia-- some proper principles (and some dreadful ones). But once a civilization grasps the concept of law, and particularly of a constitution, common law becomes unnecessary and should not be regarded as law. In a free society, anyone can have customs; but that's not law.
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Answers
When thinkers accept those who deny the existence of thinking, as fellow thinkers of a different school of thought - it is they who achieve the destruction of the mind. They grant the enemy's basic premise, thus granting the sanction of reason to formal dementia. A basic premise is an absolute that permits no co-operation with its antithesis and tolerates no tolerance.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged - Hugh Akston speaking to Dagny
No, justice has not ceased to exist. How could it? It is possible for men to abandon their sight of it, and then it is justice that destroys them. But it is not possible for justice to go out of existence, because one is an attribute of the other, because justice is the act of acknowledging that which exists...
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged - Judge Narragansett speaking to Dagny
Every form of happiness is one, every desire is driven by the same motor - by our love for a single value, for the highest potentiality of our own existence - and every achievement is an expression of it.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged - Francisco speaking to Dagny in Galt's Gulch
They could not see the world beyond the mountains, there was only a void of darkness and rock … But far in the distance, on the edge of the earth, a small flame was waving in the wind, the defiantly stubborn flame of Wyatt’s torch, twisting, being torn and regaining its hold, not to be uprooted or extinguished. It seemed to be calling and waiting for the words John Galt was now to pronounce. “The road is cleared,” said Galt. “We are going back to the world.”
Ayn Rand
To abstain from condemning a torturer is to become an accessory to his crimes
Ayn Rand
An Untitled Letter
What is the nature of Love? Love is a command to rise to one's highest potential, the best and noblest vision of oneself. Love is a reward, the greatest we can earn, granted to us for the moral qualities we have achieved in our life.
Ayn Rand
Helen Mirren portraying Ayn Rand in "The Passion of Ayn Rand."
...that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged, "This is John Galt Speaking"
There is a stage of worship which makes the worshiper himself - an object of reverence.
Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead
In the spiritual realm, the currency--which exists in limited quantity and must be teleologically measured in the pursuit of any value--is time, i.e., one's life. Since a value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep, and the amount of possible action is limited by the duration of one's lifespan, it is part of one's life that one invests in everything one values.
Ayn Rand
Rand, A. (1966, 1990). Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded second edition. New York: Meridian. p 34.
Man's consciousness is his least known and most abused vital organ. Most people believe that consciousness as such is some sort of indeterminate faculty which has no nature, no specific identity and therefore no requirements, no needs, no rules for being properly or improperly used.... Men abuse, subvert and starve their consciousness in a manner they would not dream of applying to their hair, toenails or stomachs. They know that these things have a specific identity and specific requirements, and, if one whishes to preserve them, one must comb one's hair, trim one's toenails and refrain from swallowing rat poison.
Ayn Rand
Our Cultural Value-Deprivation
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.
Ayn Rand
There is no such thing as Objectivism
Ayn Rand
The Art of Nonfiction, p 27
Besides, every means is a sub-end.
Ayn Rand
Mayhew, R. (Ed.). (1995). Ayn Rand's Marginalia. (p. 123) New Milford: Second Renaissance Books.
You goddamn fool, do you think I consider their question debatable?
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged Part One Chapter VII "The Exploiters And The Exploited"
All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.
Ayn Rand
Capitalism: Who Needs It?- The Nature of Government
Accept the fact that the achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness—not pain or mindless self-indulgence—is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged, "This Is John Galt Speaking"
In America, religion is relatively nonmystical. Religious teachers here are predominantly good, healthy materialists. They follow common sense. They would not stand in our way. The majority of religious people in this country do not accept on faith the idea of jumping into a cannibal’s pot and giving away their last shirt to the backward people of the world. Many religious leaders preach this today, because of their own leftist politics; it’s not inherent in being religious. There are many historical and philosophical connections between altruism and religion, but the function of religion in this country is not altruism. You would not find too much opposition to Objectivism among religious Americans. There are rational religious people. In fact I was pleased and astonished to discover that some religious people support Objectivism. If you want to be a full Objectivist, you cannot reconcile that with religion; but that doesn’t mean religious people cannot be individualists and fight for freedom. They can, and this country is the best proof of it.
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q&A, edited by Robert Mayhew, 2005, p. 63. (Hat tip to Michael Kelly for this reference)
I don't give a damn about my critics. I have yet to meet a good one.
Ayn Rand
The Phil Donahue Show
"The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendor that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach. But America's skyscrapers were not built by public funds nor for a public purpose: they were built by the energy, initiative and wealth of private individuals for personal profit. And, instead of impoverishing the people, these skyscrapers, as they rose higher and higher, kept raising the people's standard of living ..."
Ayn Rand
The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live,
Ayn Rand
If you agree with some tenets of Objectivism, but disagree with others, do not call yourself an Objectivist; give proper authorship credit for the parts you agree with—and then indulge in any flights of fancy you wish, on your own.
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand, "To the Readers of The Objectivist Forum,” The Objectivist Forum, Vol. 1, No. 1, ARI FAQ
He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost fascinating.
Ayn Rand
Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.
Ayn Rand
Opening paragraph of the personal statements by a Ph.D. student applicant
Such is the basic contradiction---and the terrible parasitic immorality---of any attempt to "tongue-in-cheek" thrillers. It requires that one employ all the values of a thriller in order to hold the audience's interest, yet turn these values against themselves, that one damage the very elements one is using and counting on. It means an attempt to cash in on the thing one is mocking, to profit by the audience's hunger for Romanticism while seeking to destroy it. This is not the method of a legitimate satire: satire does not share the values of that which it denounces; it denounces by means and context of an opposite set of values.
Ayn Rand
Bootleg Romanticism: The Romantic Manifesto
Christ, in terms of the Christian philosophy, is the human ideal. He personifies that which men should strive to emulate. Yet, according to the Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the non-ideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice. If I were a Christian, nothing would make me more indignant than that: the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the non-ideal, or virtue to vice. And it is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used.
Ayn Rand
“Playboy’s Interview with Ayn Rand,” – ARL p 411
The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.
Ayn Rand
GS, FNI, 157 – ARL p 158
Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character.
Ayn Rand
Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement.
Ayn Rand
The Objectivist: September 1971
Don't pass judgement (about private conduct) unless you know something is improper, and so don't wish to deal with the person. If you are not personally involved, don't pass judgement.
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Answers, p. 138.
“If I ask people whether they believe in life, they never understand what I mean. It's a bad question. It can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God. And if they say they do, then I know they don't believe in life. Why? God — whatever anyone chooses to call God — is one's highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own.”
Ayn Rand
We the Living
Faith in the supernatural begins as faith in the superiority of others.
Ayn Rand
GS, FNI, 200 – ARL p 158
Faith and force . . . are corollaries: every period of history dominated by mysticism, was a period of statism, of dictatorship, of tyranny.
Ayn Rand
“Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,” PWNI, 80 – ARL p 158
That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you. The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen - your values and choices. That which happened by accident - what family you were born into, in what country, and where you went to school - is totally unimportant.
Ayn Rand
Playboy: Has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered anything of constructive value to human life? Rand: Qua religion, no — in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusion of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason. But you must remember that religion is an early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man’s life and code of moral values, were made by religion, before man graduated or developed enough to have philosophy. And, as philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate, but in a very contradictory context and, on a very—how shall I say it?—dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith.
Ayn Rand
“Playboy’s Interview with Ayn Rand,” – ARL p 411
"My personal life," says Ayn Rand, "is a postscript to my novels: it consists of the sentence, 'And I mean it.' I have always lived by the philosophy I present in my books--and it works for me, as it works for my characters. The concretes differ, the abstractions are the same." ... "I trust that no one will tell me that men such as I wrote about don't exist. That this book has been written--and published--is proof that they do."
Ayn Rand
"About the Author," at the end of Atlas Shrugged
"A dogma is a set of beliefs accepted on faith; that is, without rational justification or against rational evidence. A dogma is a matter of blind faith."
Ayn Rand
I don't build in order to have [profits]. I have [profits] in order to build.
Ayn Rand
A bastardization of a favourite Roark quote used to settle the question of whether profits are an end in themselves. They are not.
"[Regard] language as a tool of honor, always to be used as if one were under oath--an oath of allegiance to reality."
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
When Barbara Branden was asked by a student"What will happen to the poor in an Objectivist society?" she answered "If you want to help them, you will not be stopped."
Ayn Rand
The Virtue of Selfishness
Man rises above the perceptual level by integrating his percepts into concepts, his concepts into principles, his principles into sciences, and all of his sciences into a philosophy.
Ayn Rand
(The Art of Non-Fiction, p.27)
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplacable spark. In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to reach. The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
Ayn Rand
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
Ayn Rand
I deal with the life-givers, not with the cannibals.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
I told you where your course would take you. It has. ... I'm not going to help you pretend -- by arguing with you -- that the reality you're talking about is not what it is, that there's still a way to make it work and to save your neck. There isn't. ... I didn't come here to argue.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
Ethics is not a mystic fantasy — nor a social convention — nor a dispensable, subjective luxury.... Ethics is an objective, metaphysical necessity of man’s survival — not by the grace of the supernatural nor of your neighbors nor of your whims, but by the grace of reality and the nature of life.
Ayn Rand
'The Objectivist Ethics': The Virtue of Selfishness
Kant originated the technique to sell irrational notions to the men of a skeptical, cynical age who have formally rejected mysticism without grasping the rudiments of rationality. The technique is as follows: if you want to propagate an outrageously evil idea (based on traditionally accepted doctrines), your conclusions must be brazenly clear, but your proof unintelligible. Your proof must be so tangled a mess that it will paralyze a reader’s critical faculty – a mess of evasions, equivocations, obfuscations, circumlocutions, non sequiturs, endless sentences leading nowhere, irrelevant side issues, clauses, sub-clauses and sub-sub-clauses, a meticulously lengthy proving of the obvious, and big chunks of the arbitrary thrown in as self-evident, erudite references to sciences, to pseudo sciences, to the never to be sciences, to the untraceable and the unprovable – all of it resting on a zero: the absence of definitions.
Ayn Rand
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