Ayn Rand Reed Quotations

Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?

Since time immemorial and pre-industrial, 'greed' has been the accusation hurled at the rich by the concrete-bound illiterates who were unable to conceive of the source of wealth or of the motivation of those who produce it.

Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind, and a step that travels unlimited roads.

It is futile to fight against, if one does not know what one is fighting for.

Do not keep silent when your own ideas and values are being attacked. If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the fault of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell.

If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as "social gains", if businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as "selfish greed".

It stands to reason that if sacrifices are being given, somebody is collecting sacrifices.

The nation which once held the creed that greatness is achieved by production, is now told that it is achieved by squalor.

If parasitism, favoritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence.

The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral.

Capitalism has been called a system of greed—yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of.

The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave.

The freedom of speech of private individuals includes the right to not agree, not to listen, and not to finance one's own antagonists.

Political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.