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There is no difference between the principles, policies and practical results of socialism---and those of any historical tyranny.

Working for an employer who does not share one's ideas, is not a compromise; pretending to share his ideas, is.

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

It is only in regard to concretes or particulars, implementing a mutually accepted basic principle, that one may compromise.

The bad judgment of any specific employers (or workers) does not grant the rest of us the right to correct their judgment by force.

If concern with poverty and human suffering were the collectivists' motive, they would have become champions of capitalism long ago.

You must examine your own convictions and any idea or theory you study, by asking: Is this an irreducible primary?

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

A man's achievement is not earned at the expense of those who have not achieved it.

Living in a society instead of on a desert island does not relieve a man of the responsibility of supporting his own life. The only difference is that he supports his life by trading his products or services for the products or services of others.

Altruism holds death as its ultimate goal and standard of value.

So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate the use of physical force against others.

What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing?

Of what account are praise and adulation from men whom you don't respect?

Nothing can corrupt and disintegrate a culture or a man's character as thoroughly as does the precept of moral agnosticism.

I will not help anyone to pretend that ATLAS SHRUGGED has never been written.

Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth---the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started.

A blind follower is precisely what my philosophy condemns and what I reject. Objectivism is not a mystic cult.

If a man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral.

In moral and intellectual issues, it is not enough to be right: one has to know that one is right.

Sex is not a separate nor a purely physical attribute of a man's character: it involves a complex integration of all his fundamental values.

Creative genius is not summoned forth at the point of a gun.

A thought held by many men is not held "in common." It is held individually by each individual man in his own individual mind.

Like any other value, love is not a static quantity to be divided, but an unlimited response to be earned.

Is man free? In mankind's history, capitalism is the only system that answers: Yes.

No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge.

When great industrialists made fortunes on a free market...they created new wealth; they did not take it from those who had not created it.

There is no room for the arbitrary in any activity of man, least of all in his method of cognition.

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.

Of all human conceptions, the conception of original sin is the most vicious and destructive one.