Ayn Rand/Citations
Citations de Ayn Rand
...the independent mind that recognizes no authority
higher than its own and no value higher than its judgment of truth...
Atlas Shrugged, 943
Original Sin:
"A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If 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. To hold, as man’s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man’s nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. [...]
Atlas Shrugged, 938-939
They have cut man in two, setting one half against the other. They have taught him that his body and his conscousness are two enemies engaged in deadly conflict, two antagonists of opposite nature, contradictory claims, incompatible needs, that to benefit one is to injure the other, that his soul belongs to a supernatural realm, but his body
is an evil prison holding it in bondage to this earth - and that the good is to defeat his body, to undermine it by years of patient struggle, digging his way to that glorious jail-break which leads into the freedom of the grave. They have taught man that he is a hopeless misfit made of two elements, both symbols of death. A body without a soul is a corpse, a soul without a body is a ghost - yet such is their image of man’s nature: the battleground of a struggle between a corpse and a ghost, a corpse endowed with some evil volition of its own and a ghost endowed with the knowledge that everything known to man is non-existent, that only the unknowable exists.
Atlas Shrugged, 939
Thinking men cannot be ruled.
“They claim that they perceive a mode of being superior to your existence on this earth. The mystics of spirit call it ‘another dimension,’ which consists of denying dimensions. The mystics of muscle call it ‘the future,’ which consists of denying the present. To exist is to possess identity. What identity are they able to give to their superior realm? They keep telling you what it is not, but never tell you what it is. All their identifications consist of negating: God is that which no human mind can know, they say — and proceed to demand that you consider it knowledge — God is non-man, heaven is non-earth, soul is non-body, virtue is non-profit, A is non-A, perception is non-sensory, knowledge is non-reason. Their definitions are not acts of defining, but of wiping out.”
Atlas Shrugged, 947
"Aren’t you going to tell us your motive for building that Line ?« - I have told you: the profit which I expect to make. »
Atlas Shrugged, 220
Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the evil for
the sake of the good, but of the good for the sake of the evil. Sacrifice is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t.[...]
A sacrifice is the surrender of a value. Full sacrifice is full surrender of all values. If you wish to achieve full virtue, you must seek no gratitude in return for your sacrifice, no praise, no love, no admiration, no self-esteem, not even the pride of being virtuous; the faintest trace of any gain dilutes your virtue. If you pursue a course of action that does not taint your life by any joy, that brings you no value in matter, no value in spirit, no gain, no profit, no reward - if you achieve this state of total zero, you have achieved the ideal of moral perfection.
You are told that moral perfection is impossible to man - and by this standard, it is. You cannot achieve it so long as you live, but the value of your life and of your person is gauged by how closely you succed in approaching that ideal zero which is death.
Atlas Shrugged, 941
- Do you believe in God, Andrei?
- No.
- Neither do I. But that’s a favorite question of mine. An upside-down question, you know.
- What do you mean?
- Well, if I asked people whether they believed in life, they’d never understand what I meant. It’s a bad question. It can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God. And if they say they do - then, I know they don’t believe in life.
- Why?
- Because, you see, God - whatever anyone chooses to call God - is one’s highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It’s a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own.
We the Living
Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue
Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality - not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.
Atlas Shrugged
Altruism does not mean mere kindness or generosity, but the sacrifice of the best among men to the worst, the sacrifice of virtues to flaws, of ability to incompetence, of progress to stagnation - and the subordinating of all life and of all values to the claims of anyone’s suffering.
The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave.
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
-I feel it. I don’t go by my head, but by my heart. You might be good at logic, but you’re heartless.
- Madame, when we’ll see men dying of starvation around us, your heart won’t be of any earthly use to save them. And I’m heartless enough to say that when you’ll scream, « but I didn’t know it », you will not be forgiven.
Atlas Shrugged, 385
Never mind the looters and their laws !"
Atlas Shrugged, 203
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if, only, by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube.
Atlas Shrugged, 965-966
- I am perfectly innocent, since I lost my money, since I lost all of my own money for a good cause. My motives were pure. I wanted nothing for myself. I’ve never sought anything for myself. Miss Taggart, I can proudly say that in all of my life I have never made a profit !
Her voice was quiet, steady and solemn:
"Mr Lawson, I think I should let you know that of all the statements a man can make, that is the one I consider most despicable.
Atlas Shrugged, 292
I am interested in politics so that one day I will not have to be interested in politics.
The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except
his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the ‘competition’ between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of ‘exploitation’ for which you have damned the strong.
Atlas Shrugged
Altruism does not mean mere kindness or generosity, but the sacrifice of the best among men to the
worst, the sacrifice of virtues to flaws, of ability to incompetence, of progress to stagnation - and the subordinating of all life and of all values to the claims of anyone’s suffering.
The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave.
It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where
there is service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be master.
I swear by my life and the love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man nor ask another
man to live for mine.
John Galt in « Atlas Shrugged »
Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality - not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.
Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to correct it; only a mystic would judge human beings by the standard of an impossible, automatic omniscience. But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension of sight and of thought. That which you do not know, is not a moral charge against you; but that which you refuse to know, is an account of infamy growing in your soul.
Atlas Shrugged
The two absolutes of today’s non-absolutists are that ignorance consists of claiming knowledge, and that immorality consists of pronouncing moral judgements.
Les deux absolus des anti-absolutistes d’aujourd’hui sont que l’ignorance consiste à savoir, et que l’immoralité consiste à prononcer des jugements moraux.
Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It, Faith and Force
