“There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.”
Author detail
Alice O'Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum;[a] February 2, [O.S. January 20] 1905 – March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand (/aɪn/), was a Russian-American writer and philosopher. She is known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. She wrote a play that opened on Broadway in 1935. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead. In 1957, Rand published her best-known work, the novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward, until her death in 1982, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own periodicals and releasing several collections of essays. Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge; she rejected faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism and rejected altruism. In politics, she condemned the initiation of force as immoral[5][6] and opposed collectivism, statism, and anarchism. Instead, she supported laissez-faire capitalism, which she defined as the system based on recognizing individual rights, including property rights. Although Rand opposed libertarianism, which she viewed as anarchism, she is often associated with the modern libertarian movement. In art, Rand promoted romantic realism. She was sharply critical of most philosophers and philosophical traditions known to her, except for Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and classical liberals. Rand's fiction received mixed reviews from literary critics.[ Although academic interest in her ideas has grown since her death, academic philosophers have generally ignored or rejected her philosophy because of her polemical approach and lack of methodological rigor.[4] Her writings have influenced some libertarians and conservatives politically. The Objectivist movement attempts to spread her ideas, both to the public and in academic settings
Quotes
Showing 121-140 of 145
“There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.”
“The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”
“Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.”
“Government 'help' to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.”
“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.”
“Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the j...”
“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.”
“Rights are not a matter of numbers - and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.”
“Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from op...”
“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.”
“The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.”
“Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.”
“The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.”
“Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.”
“Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started.”
“To say 'I love you' one must first be able to say the 'I.'”
“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.”
“Do not ever say that the desire to 'do good' by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.”
“Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”
“The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.”