“When a man declares: "There are no blacks and whites [in morality]" he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: "I am unwilling to be wholly good—and please don't regard me as wholly evil!"”

— Ayn Rand , book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

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Ayn Rand 322

Russian-American novelist and philosopher 1905–1982

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“The true roll in determing to embrace or reject anything is not whether it have any evil in it but whether it have more of evil than of good. There are few things wholly evil or wholly good.”

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“In truth, moral evil, if unresisted and habitual, may so blight and lay waste these capacities, that the image of God in man may seem to be wholly destroyed.”

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“When a man declares: "There are no blacks and whites [in morality]" he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: "I am unwilling to be wholly good—and please don't regard me as wholly evil!"”

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Ayn Rand 322

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