Have you ever felt a potential love for someone? Like, you don't actually love them and you know you don't, but you know you could. You realise that you could easily fall in love with them. It's almost like the bud of a flower, ready to blossom but it's just not quite there yet. And you like them a lot, you really do. You think about them often, but you don't love them. You could, though. You know you could.
Ayn RandWhatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiateโdo you hear me? no man may startโthe use of physical force against others.
Ayn RandRights are not a matter of numbers - and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.
Ayn RandBecause, 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. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it.
Ayn Rand