Ayn Rand: Trending quotes (page 14)

"Foreign Policy Drains U.S. of Main Weapon," Los Angeles Times, Sept. 9. 1962, G2 — as reported in The Ayn Rand Lexicon http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/socialism.html: Objectivism from A to Z (1986)

Men , Communication , Suicide

“An artist reveals his naked soul in his work - and so, gentle reader, do you when you respond to it.”

Ayn Rand book The Romantic Manifesto

The Romantic Manifesto (1969)

Soul

“It is not good to feel too much joy, nor to be glad that our body lives. For we matter not and it must not matter to us whether we live or die, which is to be as our brothers will it. But we, Equality 7-2521, are glad to be living. If this is a vice, then we wish no virtue.”

Ayn Rand book Anthem

Anthem (1937)

Feeling , Joy

“There is a kind of malicious wink, a contemptuous sneer in the public voices claiming the hippies as heroes. The hippies are a desperate herd looking for a master, to be taken over by anyone - anyone who would tell them how to live without demanding the effort of thinking. Theirs is the mentality ready for a fuhrer.”

Ayn Rand

Apollo and Dionysus (1969)

Thinking , Effort

“All the reasons which made the initiation of physical force evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.”

Ayn Rand book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

Evil

“When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that there is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights.” No human rights can exist without property rights.”

Ayn Rand book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

Fools , Nature

“An Asian peasant who labors through all of his waking hours, with tools created in Biblical times—a South American aborigine who is devoured by piranha in a jungle stream—an African who is bitten by the tsetse fly—an Arab whose teeth are green with decay in his mouth—these do live with their 'natural environment,' but are scarcely able to appreciate its beauty. Try to tell a Chinese mother, whose child is dying of cholera: 'Should one do everything one can? Of course not.' Try to tell a Russian housewife, who trudges miles on foot in sub-zero weather in order to spend hours standing in line at a state store dispensing food rations, that America is defiled by shopping centers, expressways and family cars.”

Ayn Rand book The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution

Source: The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971), p. 88

Family , Food , Beauty , Cars

“The highest thing in a man is not his god. It's that in him which knows the reverence due a god. You are my highest reverence.”

Ayn Rand

We The Living (1936)
Source: We The Living Last Page

God

“A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist. She smiled, her last smile, to so much that had been possible.”

Ayn Rand

We The Living (1936)

Life , Smile

“Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death.”

Ayn Rand

The Objectivist February 1971

Life , Death , Nature

“The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence—to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.”

Ayn Rand book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

Life , Happiness

“It took centuries of intellectual, philosophical development to achieve political freedom. It was a long struggle, stretching from Aristotle to John Locke to the Founding Fathers. The system they established was not based on unlimited majority but on its opposite: on individual rights, which were not to be alienated by majority vote or minority plotting. The individual was not left at the mercy of his neighbors or his leaders: the Constitutional system of checks and balances was scientifically devised to protect him from both. This was the great American achievement—and if concern for the actual welfare of other nations were our present leaders' motive, this is what we should have been teaching the world. Instead, we are deluding the ignorant and the semi-savage by telling them that no political knowledge is necessary—that our system is only a matter of subjective preference—that any prehistorical form of tribal tyranny, gang rule, and slaughter will do just as well, with our sanction and support. It is thus that we encourage the spectacle of Algerian workers marching through the streets [in the 1962 Civil War] and shouting the demand: "Work, not blood!"—without knowing what great knowledge and virtue are required to achieve it. In the same way, in 1917, the Russian peasants were demanding: "Land and Freedom!" But Lenin and Stalin is what they got. In 1933, the Germans were demanding: "Room to live!" But what they got was Hitler. In 1793, the French were shouting: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!"”

Ayn Rand

What they got was Napoleon. In 1776, the Americans were proclaiming "The Rights of Man"—and, led by political philosophers, they achieved it. No revolution, no matter how justified, and no movement, no matter how popular, has ever succeeded without a political philosophy to guide it, to set its direction and goal.
The Ayn Rand Column

War , World , Way , Motivation

“And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: 'I.”

Ayn Rand book Anthem

Anthem (1937)

Men , God , Peace , Joy

“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

The Ayn Rand Letter (1971–1976)

Dependency

“What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.”

Ayn Rand

Playboy Interview (March 1964)