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
All work is an act of philosophy.
A majority vote is not an epistemological validation of an idea. Voting is merely a proper political device--within a strictly, constitutionall y delimited sphere of action--for choosing the practical means of implementing a society’s basic principles. But those principles are not determined by vote.
If parasitism, favoritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence.
I am a man who does not exist for others.
It is the metaphysically given that must be accepted: it cannot be changed. It is the man-made that must never be accepted uncritically: it must be judged, then accepted or rejected and changed when necessary.
Two world wars, three monstrous dictatorships-in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Red China-plus every lesser variant of devastating socialist experimentation in a global spread of brutality and despair, have not prompted modern intellectuals to question or revise their dogma. They still think that it is daring, idealistic and unconventional to denounce the rich. They still believe that money is the root of all evil-except government money, which is the solution to all problems.
Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through.
Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion.
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.
Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.
Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
An inventor is a man who asks 'Why?' of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.
In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.
Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by producing.