Ayn Rand on the businessman and bureaucrat

If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences.  If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences. 

~ Ayn Rand

 

Ayn Rand on consistency

In any conflict between two men (or two groups), it is the more consistent one who wins.

~ Ayn Rand, The Anatomy of Compromise

(as quoted by Sheldon Richman, America's Counter-Revolution, p. 10)

Neil Peart on the influence of Ayn Rand's book, The Fountainhead

I think everything I do has Howard Roark [hero of The Fountainhead] in it, you know, as much as anything. The person I write for is Howard Roark.

~ Neil Peart

Ayn Rand on the cause of depressions

All depressions are caused by government interference and the cure is always offered to take more of the poison that caused the disaster. Depressions are not the result of a free economy.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand on ignoring reality

We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand on charity vs. achievement

We are taught to admire the second-hander who dispense gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible.  We praise an act of charity.  We shrug at an act of achievement.

~ Ayn Rand

Ludwig Von Mises on higher living standards (message to Ayn Rand)

You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the efforts of men who are better than you.

~ Ludwig Von Mises to Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand on the humanitarian nature of capitalism

If capitalism had never existed, any honest humanitarian should have been struggling to invent it. But when you see men struggling to evade its existence, to misrepresent its nature, and to destroy its last remnants - you may be sure that whatever their motives, love for man is not one of them.

~ Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Ayn Rand on the Constitution

Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals - that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government - that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand on government threat to individual rights

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. When unlimited and unrestricted by individual rights, a government is man's deadliest enemy. It is not as protection against private actions, but against governmental actions that the Bill of Rights was written.

~ Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

Ayn Rand on government making criminals out of innocent men

There is no way to rule innocent men. The only power 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.

~ Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (1957)

Any Rand on conservatives poorly defending capitalism

The liberals are constantly asserting that they represent the future – that they are new, progressive, forward-looking, etc. And they denounce the conservatives as old-fashioned representatives of a dead past. The conservatives conceded and thus helped the liberals to propagate one of today’s most grotesque contradictions. Collectivism and dictatorship – the frozen status society – is offered to us in the name of progress, while capitalism – the only free, dynamic, creative society ever devised – is defended in the name of passivity and stagnation.

The plea to preserve tradition as such appeals to the worst elements in men and rejects the best. It appeals to fear, cowardice, conformity, self doubt, and rejects creativeness, originality, independence, self-reliance. It is an outrageous plea to address to human beings anywhere, but the more outrageous here, in America – the country based on the principle that man must stand on his own feet, lead by his own judgment, and move constantly forward as a productive, creative innovator.

Ayn Rand, "Ayn Rand on the GOP," (video) 1961

Ayn Rand on do-gooders

Do not consider Collectivists as "sincere but deluded idealists". The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal; brutality is not "idealistic," no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand on the anti-capitalistic mentality

The American businessmen, as a class, have demonstrated the greatest productive genius and the most spectacular achievements ever recorded in the economic history of mankind. What reward did they receive from our culture and its intellectuals? The position of a hated, persecuted minority. The position of a scapegoat for the evils of the bureaucrats.

~ Ayn Rand