Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasnโt done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity.
Ayn RandMan 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.
Ayn RandPeople think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What Iโve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders oneโs reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person oneโs master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that personโs view requires to be fakedโฆThe man who lies to the world, is the worldโs slave from then onโฆThere are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.
Ayn Rand