“I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life.”
Source: Atlas Shrugged
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Ayn Rand 322
Russian-American novelist and philosopher 1905–1982Related quotes
“I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life.”
Science and Spirit interview (2004)
Context: We all eat or are eaten. That's the way life works, it's a greater rhythm. And that's why science and the understandings it has uncovered can be a source of joy.
This all relates to assent, a very important Judeo-Christian concept. "Thy will be done" is a God-kind of assent. "God works in mysterious ways," and you're supposed to give assent even if you don't like it. As a religious naturalist, I think of assent differently. Assent is saying, "Okay, for whatever reason, this is the way life works. It's an acceptance of what is. After that fundamental acceptance, I can live my life to minimize suffering and promote as much as good as I can, and try through whatever work I do to help others." We can't get around death, but we can get around poverty. We can try to avoid women being brutalized. We can curb environmental degradation.
One can start from the perspective of a religious naturalist or from the perspective of the world religions and arrive at the same place: a moral imperative that this Earth and its creatures be respected and cherished.
“If one good deed in all my life I did,
I do repent it from my very soul.”
Part I, Ch. 1
Green Hills of Africa (1935)
Howard Stern, What I've Learned, Esquire Magazine (January 2006)
“When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that's my religion.”
Quoted in 3:439 Herndon's Lincoln (1890), p. 439 http://books.google.com/books?id=rywOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA439&dq=%22when+i+do+good+i+feel+good%22: Inasmuch as he was so often a candidate for public office Mr. Lincoln said as little about his religious code as possible, especially if he failed to coincide with the orthodox world. In illustration of his religious code I once heard him say that it was like that of an old man named Glenn, in Indiana, whom he heard speak at a church meeting, and who said: "When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that's my religion."
Posthumous attributions
Source: Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (1999), p. 47
“I am not a politician, and my other habits are good, also.”
Fourth of July Oration.