Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Randwas a Russian-born American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism. Educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. She had a play produced on Broadway in 1935–1936. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful in America, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 February 1905
CitySaint Petersburg, Russia
CountryRussian Federation
The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve 'the common good.' It is true that capitalism does -- if that catch-phrase has any meaning -- but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification for capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man's rational nature, that it protects man's survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice
To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.
To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it.
Ideas, in a free society, are not a crime- and neither can they serve as the justification of a crime.
No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the sum of his knowledge.
The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another.
Each man must live as an end in himself and follow his own rational self-interest.
What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.
To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men.
It was the joy of admiration and of one's own ability, growing together.
This was the great clarity of being beyond emotion, after the reward of having felt everything one could feel.
When you force a man to act against his own choice and judgment, it's his thinking that you want him to suspend.
Kant is the most evil man in mankind's history.
I am an innovator. This is a term of distinction, a term of honor, rather than something to hide or apologize for. Anyone who has new or valuable ideas to offer stands outside the intellectual status quo. But the status quo is not a stream, let alone a 'mainstream'. It is a stagnant swamp. It is the innovators who carry mankind forward.