A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment … is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule.
Tag: Ayn Rand
(1905 – 1982) Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter.
No compromise with evil
In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.
There is no ‘we’ without ‘I’
Any group or ‘collective,’ large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the ‘rights’ of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking … A group, as such, has no rights.
Rejecting ‘equality of outcome’
I refuse to apologize for my ability —
I refuse to apologize for my success —
I refuse to apologize for my money.
If this is evil, make the most of it.
Government altruism
Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive.
Authority without responsibility
If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences.
Immoral morality of the elites
It was not the tycoons of big business, it was not the working classes, it was the intellectuals who reversed the trend toward political freedom and revived the doctrines of the absolute State, of totalitarian government rule, of the government’s right to control the lives of the citizens in any manner it pleases. This time, it was not in the name of the ‘divine right of kings,’ but in the name of the divine right of the masses. The basic principle was the same: The right to enforce at the point of a gun the moral doctrines of whoever happens to seize control of the machinery of government.
Difference between socialism and fascism
The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.
Human chattel
Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel.
Destroy civilization by first destroying the money
Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: ‘Account Overdrawn.’