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Concrete problems cannot even be grasped, let alone judged or solved, without reference to abstract principles.

If a man believes that the good is intrinsic in certain actions, he will not hesitate to force others to perform them.

The power of production is not the same thing as the power of coercion by physical force.

In a rational ethics, it is causality--not "duty"--that serves as the guiding principle in considering, evaluating & choosing one's actions.

Since man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgments.

The worst guilt is to accept an undeserved guilt.

There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think.

Man's consciousness is his least known and most abused vital organ.

Like a mixed economy, men of mixed premises may be called "gray"; but, in both cases, the mixture does not remain "gray" for long.

THE FOUNTAINHEAD is my contribution to keeping America what it was and must remain -- the country of individualism.

THE FOUNTAINHEAD is my contribution to keeping America what it was and must remain -- the country of individualism.

If more people learned to understand their real business interests correctly and to act accordingly, we would have a much better world.

The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.

The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.

All collectivist systems of society, by their own stated theory and in fact, are conspiracies against intelligence.

Communism must be fought not on the grounds of its practice, but precisely on the grounds of its theoretical ideals.

The term "individual rights" is a redundancy: there is no other kind of rights and no one else to possess them.

“My dear fellow, who will let you?"

“That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”

• Howard Roark

The absolute state is merely an institutionalized form of gang rule, regardless of which particular gang seizes power.

The term "duty" negates all the essentials of a rational view of life and makes them inapplicable to man's actions.

The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act; a thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature.

A man's self is his consciousness and the center and motor of his consciousness is his mind.

The intellectuals serve as guides, as trend-setters, as the transmission belts or middlemen between philosophy and the culture.

A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue.

Observe that in all the propaganda of the ecologists, man is treated as if he were an unnatural phenomenon.

A political battle is merely a skirmish fought with muskets; a philosophical battle is a nuclear war.

When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil.

A personal promise or agreement is the only valid, binding obligation, without which none of the others can or do stand.

A process of reason is a process of constant choice in answer to the question: True or False?--Right or Wrong?