Ayn Rand: Mean

Ayn Rand was Russian-American novelist and philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on mean.

Ayn Rand: 644 quotes39 likes

“When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.”

Ayn Rand book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)

“Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.”

“Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.”

“Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.”

The Ayn Rand Column ‘Introducing Objectivism’

“My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.”

Ayn Rand book Anthem

Source: Anthem

“Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building, when and if you are an architect?”
“Yes.”
“My dear fellow, who will let you?”
“That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

“Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds, I am not a sacrifice on their altars.”

Ayn Rand book Anthem

Anthem (1937)

“I want to know that I've accomplished something. I want to feel that it had some meaning. At the last summing up, I want to be sure it wasn't all-for nothing.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

“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.”

“Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.”

Ayn Rand book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

“The worst evil that you can do, psychologically, is to laugh at yourself. That means spitting in your own face.”

Question period following Lecture 11 of Leonard Peikoff's series "The Philosophy of Objectivism," 1976

“The hippies are the living demonstration of what it means to give up reason, and to rely on one's primeval instincts, urges, intuitions, and whims. With such tools, they are unable to grasp even what is needed to satisfy their wishes; for example, the wish to have a festival. Where would they be without the charity of the local "squares" who fed them? Where would they be without the fifty doctors rushed from New York to save their lives? Without the automobiles that brought them to the festival? Without the soda pop and beer they substituted for water? Without the helicopters that brought the entertainers? Without all the achievements of the technological civilization they denounce? Left to their own devices, they literally didn't know enough to come in out of the rain.”

Apollo and Dionysus (1969)

“Man’s rights can be violated only by the use of physical force. It is only by means of physical force that one man can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing his own goals, or compel him to act against his own rational judgment.”

Ayn Rand book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

“Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive by any random means, as a parasite, a moocher or a looter, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment—so he is free to seek his happiness in any irrational fraud, any whim, any delusion, any mindless escape from reality, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment nor to escape the consequences.”

Ayn Rand book The Virtue of Selfishness

Sometimes paraphrased as "You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality."
The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

“You have all heard the old bromide to the effect that man has his eyes on the stars and his feet in the mud. It is usually taken to mean that man's reason and his physical senses are the element pulling him down to the mud while his mystical, super-rational emotions are the element that lifts him to the stars. This is the grimmest inversion of many in mankind's history. But, last summer, reality offered you a literal dramatization of the truth. It is man's irrational emotions that bring him down to the mud. It is man's reason that lifts him to the stars.”

Apollo and Dionysus (1969)

“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”

"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)

“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)

“The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals.”

Ayn Rand book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

“Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to “do something.” By “ideological” (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals. (E. g., the Conservative Party, that subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism; or the “libertarian” hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.) To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principles for the sake of some superficial political action which is bound to fail.”

“What Can One Do?” The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. 1, No. 7 (1972)

“Do you believe in God, Andrei? No. Neither do I. But that's a favorite question of mine. An upside-down question, you know. What do you mean? Well, if I asked people whether they believed in life, they'd never understand what I meant. 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? Because, you see, 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. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it.”

We The Living (1936)
Source: We The Living Part One Chapter 9