The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.
Ayn RandAltruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.
Ayn RandThe only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence - to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
Ayn RandHe, too, stood looking at her for a moment - and it seemed to her that it was not a look of greeting after an absence, but the look of someone who had thought of her every day of that year. She could not be certain, it was only an instant, so brief that just as she caught it, he was turning.
Ayn Rand