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The 20 Best Quotes From Ayn Rand
Townhall.com ^ | July 20, 2012 | John Hawkins

Posted on 07/20/2012 12:26:45 PM PDT by Kaslin

20) "Ask yourself why totalitarian dictatorships find it necessary to pour money and effort into propaganda for their own helpless, chained, gagged slaves, who have no means of protest or defense. The answer is that even the humblest peasant or the lowest savage would rise in blind rebellion, were he to realize that he is being immolated, not to some incomprehensible noble purpose, but to plain, naked human evil."

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

18) "Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent."

17) "Man’s unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself. If a drought strikes them, animals perish — man builds irrigation canals; if a flood strikes them, animals perish — man builds dams; if a carnivorous pack attacks them animals perish — man writes the Constitution of the United States. But one does not obtain food, safety or freedom — by instinct.”

16) "And what is the state but a servant and a convenience for a large number of people, just like the electric light and the plumbing system? And wouldn't it be preposterous to claim that men must exist for their plumbing, not the plumbing for the men."

15) "Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen."

14) "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."

13) "Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production."

12) "Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing — when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors — when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot."

11) "We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality."

10) "Government 'help' to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off."

9) "The right to life is the source of all rights -- and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave."

8) "An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes."

7) "Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual)."

6) "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."

5) "The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."

4) "The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see."

3) "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. 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."

2) "America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance—and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way."

1) "We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: aynrand; books; economics; quotes
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1 posted on 07/20/2012 12:26:50 PM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

if you say so.


2 posted on 07/20/2012 12:29:50 PM PDT by the invisib1e hand
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To: the invisib1e hand
What does that mean? Sound like you're trying to say something disparaging but don't have the stones to come out and say it.

3 posted on 07/20/2012 12:36:26 PM PDT by I see my hands (It's time to.. KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHER FREEPERS!)
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To: Kaslin

Rand would have championed homosexual “marriage.”


4 posted on 07/20/2012 12:38:31 PM PDT by fwdude ( You cannot compromise with that which you must defeat.)
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To: Noumenon

Ping.


5 posted on 07/20/2012 12:39:32 PM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: Kaslin

All of them are good, thanks.


6 posted on 07/20/2012 12:40:53 PM PDT by CSM (Keeper of the Dave Ramsey Ping list. FReepmail me if you want your beeber stuned.)
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To: I see my hands

There’s an interesting juxtaposition - the guy who can see his hands responding to the invisible hand.


7 posted on 07/20/2012 12:40:58 PM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: Kaslin

I am done with the monster of “we,” the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: “I.”


8 posted on 07/20/2012 12:41:02 PM PDT by donna (Conservatives believe in God, Family, Country. Not money, money, money.)
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To: I see my hands
What does that mean? Sound like you're trying to say something disparaging but don't have the stones to come out and say it.

my criticisms of Rand's glaring, obvious logical weaknesses, which naturally enough send her followers into a tizzy of ad-hominem sniping repleat with clever graphics, are public record.

You really should do your homework before you embarass yourself publicly by baselessly insulting someone else.

9 posted on 07/20/2012 12:41:02 PM PDT by the invisib1e hand
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To: Kaslin

bump for later


10 posted on 07/20/2012 12:41:41 PM PDT by DustyMoment (Congress - another name for white collar criminals!!)
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To: Kaslin

I don’t know the whole quote but it says something about “The moochers, when deprived of their free handouts, will perish which is as it should be.” or something similar to that.

That one is my favorite.


11 posted on 07/20/2012 12:42:13 PM PDT by spel_grammer_an_punct_polise (I wanna start a Seniors' Motor Scooter Gang. Wanna join?)
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To: Kaslin
I often use the quotes below to impugn the words of Je$$e Jack$on.

"Any African-American who votes Republican is a turncoat."
~Je$$e Jack$on

"I refuse to have my views dictated to me as if I were an intellectual slave."~Justice Clarence Thomas

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

12 posted on 07/20/2012 12:43:11 PM PDT by South40 ("Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance." Hussein Obama, Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009)
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To: Kaslin
Nearly every quote by Rand can be completely repudiated by the only Author we should ultimately listen to:

14) "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."

I am crucified with Christ: neverthless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

13 posted on 07/20/2012 12:43:49 PM PDT by fwdude ( You cannot compromise with that which you must defeat.)
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To: Kaslin
Compare quote #2 to “you didn't build that” by 0bama.
14 posted on 07/20/2012 12:44:22 PM PDT by allmendream (Tea Party did not send GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism)
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To: Kaslin

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

This destroys the whole, “we are for minorities” narrative of the left.


15 posted on 07/20/2012 12:44:49 PM PDT by GraceG
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To: the invisib1e hand

Do you have some better ones for us? Or is there something in there you disagree with?


16 posted on 07/20/2012 12:47:48 PM PDT by Lurker (Violence is rarely the answer. But when it is, it is the only answer.)
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To: the invisib1e hand

“Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation’s troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.”

This is one I particularly like. Does this one have an “obvious logical weakness”? If so, I don’t see it and need your help pointing it out to me.

Thanks.


17 posted on 07/20/2012 12:48:08 PM PDT by samtheman (Obama. Mugabe. Chavez. (Obamugavez))
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To: Kaslin

I’m partial to “check your premises.”


18 posted on 07/20/2012 12:50:19 PM PDT by GSWarrior
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To: Kaslin

My fave (and my new tag line) is #6


19 posted on 07/20/2012 12:51:00 PM PDT by Mr. K ("The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum [of good]")
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To: fwdude

(slapping self on forehead)

Well, there you go. That makes all those things she said wrong.

Can’t argue with logic like that.


20 posted on 07/20/2012 12:51:00 PM PDT by Lee'sGhost (Johnny Rico picked the wrong girl!)
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