The art of writing is the art of doing what you think you're doing. This is not as simple as it sounds. It implies a very difficult undertaking: the necessity to think. And it implies the requirement to think out three separate, very hard problems: What is it you want to say? How are you going to say it? Have you really said it?
Ayn RandEvery 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.
Ayn RandValue is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. Virtue is the act by which one aims and/or keeps it.
Ayn RandNo concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the sum of his knowledge.
Ayn RandOne can study what exists and how consciousness functions; but one cannot analyze (or โproveโ) existence as such, or consciousness as such. These are irreducible primaries. (An attempt to โproveโ them is self-contradict ory: it is an attempt to โproveโ existence by means of nonexistence, and consciousness by means of unconsciousness .)
Ayn RandThe source of the government's authority is โthe consent of the governed.โ This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose.
Ayn Rand