“Self respect is something that can't be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man's pretense at it.”

—  Ayn Rand , book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Self respect is something that can't be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man's pretense at it." by Ayn Rand?
Ayn Rand photo
Ayn Rand 322
Russian-American novelist and philosopher 1905–1982

Related quotes

Harry Harrison photo

“Cold-blooded killing is just not my thing. I've killed in self-defence, I'll not deny that, but I still maintain an exaggerated respect for life in all forms.”

Harry Harrison The Stainless Steel Rat

The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge (1970)
The Stainless Steel Rat
Context: Cold-blooded killing is just not my thing. I've killed in self-defence, I'll not deny that, but I still maintain an exaggerated respect for life in all forms. Now that we know that the only thing on the other side of the sky is more sky, the idea of an afterlife has finally been slid into the history books alongside the rest of the quaint and forgotten religions. With heaven and hell gone we are faced with the necessity of making a heaven or hell right here. What with societies and metatechnology and allied disciplines we have come a long way and life on the civilised worlds is better than it was during the black days of superstition. But with the improving of here and now comes the stark realisation that here and now is all we have. Each of us has only this one brief experience with the bright light of consciousness in that endless dark night of eternity and must make the most of it. Doing this means we must respect the existence of everyone else and the most criminal act imaginable is the terminating of one of these conscious existences.

Robert Penn Warren photo

“The end of man is knowledge but there's one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it would save him.”

Robert Penn Warren book All the King's Men

All the King's Men (1946)

“Kill the gringo. What I mean is we must kill the gringo economically and politically but not necessarily physically unless, of course, the worst comes to the worst.”

José Ángel Gutiérrez (1944) American academic

page 10523 of HOUSE OF REPRESE.NTATIVES-Monday, April 28, 1969. This is on page 27/99 of the part 8-5 PDF https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1969-pt8/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1969-pt8-5.pdf ( archive http://archive.is/753l4). According to Behnken this was said "a few weeks later" to clarify the preceding MAYO rally quote. Gonzalez describes it as "Last Tuesday, at Kingsville" indicating it was said 22 April 1969.

Pete Doherty photo

“Each man kills the things he loves.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

I recognise that in myself, in relationships, even with guitars, beautiful things that I've had and wilfully destroyed.
Definitions and objects

Rick Steves photo

“Self-consciousness kills communication.”

Rick Steves (1955) US travel writer
Elbert Hubbard photo

“And the worst part about making a soldier of a man is not that a soldier kills brown men or white men, but that the soldier loses his own soul.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Source: A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911), p. 15.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto photo

“I did not kill that man. My God is aware of it. I am big enough to admit if I had done it, that admission would have been less of an ordeal and humiliation than this barbarous trial which no self respecting man can endure.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928–1979) Fourth President and ninth Prime Minister of Pakistan

Letter to his attorney, Yahya Bakhtiar, after his death sentence, as quoted in My Dearest Daughter : A letter from the Death Cell http://www.bhutto.org/Acrobat/Dearest_Daughter%5B1%5D.pdf (2007).
Context: I did not kill that man. My God is aware of it. I am big enough to admit if I had done it, that admission would have been less of an ordeal and humiliation than this barbarous trial which no self respecting man can endure. I am a Muslim. A Muslim's fate is in the hands of God Almighty I can face Him with a clear conscience and tell Him that I rebuilt His Islamic State of Pakistan from ashes into a respectable Nation. I am entirely at peace with my conscience in this black hole of Kot Lakhpat. I am not afraid of death. You have seen what fires I have passed through.

“I think cynicism is the worst thing because it kills everything. There’s no more honesty, no more poetry, no more freshness. Cynicism is the worst thing — a kind of smart person who’s got all the answers. This is death. It kills creation. There’s no love, no tenderness, nothing at all left. There’s no hatred even, nothing. Equally dangerous is the detached attitude that says, “Everything is fun!””

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Conversation. Interview with Byron Dobell (1957), p. 38

David Lynch photo

“The worst thing about this modern world is that people think you get killed on television with zero pain and zero blood. It must enter into kids' heads that it's not very messy to kill somebody, and it doesn't hurt that much. That's a real sickness to me. That's a real sick thing.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

As quoted in "Dark Lens on America" in The New York Times Magazine (14 January 1990) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE0D6113FF937A25752C0A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

Related topics