Government and Racism http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3EADdr-5AY (16 April 2007).
2000s, 2006-2009
Context: I’m not a racist. As a matter of fact, Rosa Parks is one of my heroes, Martin Luther King is a hero — because they practiced the libertarian principle of civil disobedience, nonviolence.
Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called "diversity" actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist. The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity.
“Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.”
The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
Context: Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage—the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.
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Ayn Rand 322
Russian-American novelist and philosopher 1905–1982Related quotes
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.”
Variant: Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but the highest form of intelligence.
“Rewards and punishment is the lowest form of education.”
“Time is the primitive form of the stream of consciousness.”
Introduction<!-- p. 5 -->
Space—Time—Matter (1952)
Context: Time is the primitive form of the stream of consciousness.... If we project ourselves outside the stream of consciousness and represent its content as an object, it becomes an event happening in time, the separate stages of which stand to one another in the relations of earlier and later.
Source: Global Shift (2003) (Fourth Edition), Chapter 13, The Financial Services Industries, p. 437
“Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.”
Source: Hitch-22: A Memoir
Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), p. 16 (Quote is from Marx, Early Writings (1964), p. 154).
Interview (January 1965?)
By any means necessary: speeches, interviews, and a letter (1970)
Context: I am not a racist. I am against every form of racism and segregation, every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color.
“You know, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.'
'And yet it is still extremely funny.”
Source: The Time of My Life