Quote collection
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"There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism - by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide."
"If the truth shall kill them, let them die."
"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours."
"A businessman cannot force you to buy his product; if he makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences; if he fails, he takes the loss. If bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences; if he fails, he passes the loss on to you."
"When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."
"Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims."
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."
"The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it."
"When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed"
"We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality"
"So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?"
"The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."
"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
"Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics - a rational ethics - as a precondition of rebirth."
"You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality."
"From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind."
"But I don't think of you. - Howard Roark"
"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."
"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."
"Government 'help' to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off."