Ayn Rand – Uncommon Sense

More laws for more control

There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, 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.

Don’t conflate capitalism and corporatism

There is a very important confusion. What we have to distinguish between are capitalist industrialists who operate on a free market and the kind of capitalists who operate with government help.

Property rights = freedom

The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights …

There can be no compromise

There can be no compromise on basic principles.
There can be no compromise on moral issues.
There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.

The nature of socialism

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.

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.

Tag: Ayn Rand