Source: Manhood of Humanity (1921), p. 136. Chapter: Capitalistic Era.
Context: Such as contribute most to human progress and human enlightenment — men like Gutenberg, Copernicus, Newton, Leibnitz, Watts, Franklin, Mendeleieff, Pasteur, Sklodowska-Curie, Edison, Steinmetz, Loeb, Dewey, Keyser, Whitehead, Russell, Poincaré, William Benjamin Smith, Gibbs, Einstein, and many others — consume no more bread than the simplest of their fellow mortals. Indeed such men are often in want. How many a genius has perished inarticulate because unable to stand the strain of social conditions where animal standards prevail and "survival of the fittest" means, not survival of the "fittest in time-binding capacity," but survival of the strongest in ruthlessness and guile — in space-binding competition!
“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.”
The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Ayn Rand 322
Russian-American novelist and philosopher 1905–1982Related quotes
“The things which philosophy attempts to teach by reasoning, poverty forces us to practice.”
iv. 32a. 11
Quotes by and about Diogenes
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”
He paused, throwing the question at them and waiting until they formed their own answer. Then he shouted, "No, it does not! What is humanity, a physical form only? I say it is more. It is intellect and reason and dignity. It is these qualities that must survive, not the mere number of twisted sickly bodies."
Source: The Rebellers (1963), p. 79
“Never attempt to reason with people who know they are right!”
In an 1987 interview, "Aluminum Cucumbers" http://russiantumble.com/tag/viktortsoi/ (7 November 2012)
Source: In Memory of the Arab Prophet (1 April 1943)
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). 168.
Context: Creatures really have divergent and conflicting desires. Their distinct motives are not (usually) wishes for survival or for means-to-survival, but for various particular things to be done and obtained while surviving. And these can always conflict. Motivation is fundamentally plural. It must be so because, in evolution, all sorts of contingincies and needs arise, calling for all sorts of different responses. An obsessive creature, constantly dominated by one kind of motive, would not survive.
Source: The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)
Context: Soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.