“Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don’t ask them to achieve self-respect. They will hate your soul.”

— 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 "Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don’t ask them to a…" by Ayn Rand?

Ayn Rand 322

Russian-American novelist and philosopher 1905–1982

Related quotes

“People need self-respect, but self-respect must be earned -- it cannot be self-respect if it's not earned -- and the only way to earn anything is to achieve it in the face of the possibility of failing.”

Charles Murray (1943) American libertarian political scientist, author, and columnist

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/16997889.
Crown Forum (2012); ISBN10: 0307453421; ISBN13: 9780307453426.

“I respect what is repectable," Tan'elkoth replied. "To ask for respect where none has been earned is childish maundering.And what is repectable, in the end, save service? Even your idol Jefferson is, in the end, measured by how well he served the species. The prize of individualism--its goal--is self-actualization, which is only another name for vanity. We do not admire men for achieving self-actualization; we admire self-actualization when its end result is a boon to humanity.”

Matthew Stover book Blade of Tyshalle

(I.3) Del Rey, p. 75
Blade of Tyshalle (2001)

“The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear.”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

Quoted in "Visions of Reality - A Study of Abnormal Perception and Behavior" - by Alberto Rivas - Psychology - 2007 - Page 162
Undated

“Ask me to play. I'll play. Ask me to shoot. I'll shoot. Ask me to pass. I'll pass. Ask me to steal, block out, sacrifice, lead, dominate. Anything. But it's not what you ask of me. It's what I ask of myself.”

LeBron James (1984) American basketball player

“They don’t ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.”

Borís Pasternak (1890–1960) Russian writer

On Soviet bureaucrats, in LIFE magazine (13 June 1960)

“When mass murder’s been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there’s no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is the bloodier.”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ch 26
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Voluntas Tua
Context: The abbot snapped off the set. "Where’s the truth”? he asked quietly. “What’s to be believed? Or does it matter at all? When mass murder’s been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there’s no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is the bloodier. Evil, on evil, piled on evil. Was there any justification in our ‘police action’ in space? How can we know? Certainly there was no justification for what they did — or was there? We only know what that thing says, and that thing is a captive. The Asian radio has to say what will least displease its government; ours has to say what will least displease our fine patriotic opinionated rabble, which is what, coincidentally, the government wants it to say anyhow, so where’s the difference?"