The Quotable...Ayn Rand

I gathered some of my favorite quotes from Ayn Rand. Some of these were taken from interviews she did, her novels and her non-fiction writing. Rand has had a huge impact on my outlook to life. Why, because she makes plain old fashioned "sense." Not the politically correct, don't offend anyone, coddle your kids, go along with the crowd, don't make waves crap that is going around today.

- "The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."

- "When 'the common good' of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of *some* men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals."

- "The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it."

- "I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

- "Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others."

- "The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles."

- "I am a man who does not exist for others."

- "[I am] interested in politics for only one reason -- to reach the day when I would not have to be interested in politics. I wanted to secure a society in which I would be free to pursue my own concerns and goals, knowing that the government would not interfere to wreck them, knowing that my life, my work, my future were not at the mercy of the state..."

- "The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system—and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny."

- "Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property."

Allan W Janssen is the author of the petition to have people mind their own business instead of yours at; http://www.petitiononline.com/moses/petition.html