Ideas, in a free society, are not a crime- and neither can they serve as the justification of a crime.

Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.

If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society-you are not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not. Only a slave acts on permission. A permission is not a right.

I am speaking to those among you who have retained some sovereign shred of their soul, unsold and unstamped: '- to the order of others'. If, in the chaos of the motives that have made you listen to the radio tonight, there was an honest, rational desire to learn what is wrong with the world, you are the man whom I wished to address. By the rules and terms of my code, one owes a rational statement to those whom it does concern and who are making an effort to know. Those who are making an effort to fail to understand me, are not a concern of mine.

A reader has to be concerned only with the end result; unless he chooses to analyze it, he does not have to know by what means that result was achieved-but it is my job to know.

Every man builds his world in his own image; he has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice. If he abdicates his power, he abdicates the status of man, and the grinding chaos of the irrational is what he achieves as his sphere of existence—by his own choice.

Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you?" He answered, "Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one.