To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.
The concept of free competition enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms.
If men want to oppose war, it is statism that they must oppose.
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.
The degree of a country’s freedom is the degree of its prosperity.
The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite’s concern is the conquest of men.
Defiance, not obedience, is the American’s answer to overbearing authority.
The Founding Fathers were neither passive, death-worshipin g mystics nor mindless, power-seeking looters; as a political group they were a phenomenon unprecedented in history: they were thinkers who were also men of action.
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.
Men have died in torture chambers, on the stake, in concentration camps, in front of firing squads, rather than renounce their convictions. The appeaser renounces his under the pressure of a frown on a vacant face.
A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.
There are no evil thoughts except one; the refusal to think.
So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?
America’s founding Ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more – and nothing less.
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.
Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.
Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one’s consciousness can permit the faking of existence.
What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.
The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.