The Romanticists predominantly, were enemies of capitalism, which they regarded as a prosaic, materialistic, โpetty bourgeoisโ system โ never realizing that it was the only system that could make freedom, individuality and the pursuit of values possible in practice.
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 RandOne of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.
Ayn RandThe moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve 'the common good.' It is true that capitalism does -- if that catch-phrase has any meaning -- but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification for capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man's rational nature, that it protects man's survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice
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