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If your concept of the right is rational, you will be able to achieve it in your own life and, perhaps, influence others to achieve it.

Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration.

Capitalism cannot exist on a foundation of irrationality and the two arch-destroyers of reason in modern history are Hume and Kant.

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision.

The revolting intellectual mess in which the world finds itself now is ultimate result, the end of the blind alley of collectivism.

One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves.

Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival.

Only an act of true selfishness motivated by and intended for one's own benefit can be of any benefit or value to others.

In a free society, no matter how hard the struggle might be, it is reason that ultimately wins.

Once men have accepted the idea of self-sacrifice as the good, they have accepted the idea of sacrificing others, too.

Once I make a decision, either in regard to writing or to any other matter, I do not hesitate, vacillate or suffer over carrying it out.

Man's motive power is his moral code.

The most crucial aspect of egoism is the sovereignty of one's own rational judgment and the right to live by its guidance.

The battle of philosophers is a battle for man's mind. If you do not understand their theories, you are vulnerable to the worst among them.

A writer without a plot sense is like a blind cameraman.

The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.

Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible.

It is the idea that self-sacrifice is proper and moral which permits men to sacrifice and butcher others also.

I am opposed to the initiation of physical force in any human-social relationships, by anyone, for any purpose whatsoever.

Show me the woman a man sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself.

The man-worshipers, in my sense of the term, are those who see man's highest potential and strive to actualize it. The man-haters are those who regard man as a helpless, depraved, contemptible creature; and struggle to never let him discover otherwise.

Any intrusion of government into the field of ideas, for or against anyone, withers intellectual freedom and creates a privileged elite.

Whatever he was—that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love—he was not man.

In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible.

Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us.

Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices.

The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear.

The power that determines the establishment, the changes, the evolution, and the destruction of social systems is philosophy.

What objectivity and the study of philosophy require is not an "open mind," but an active mind.