The writer who develops a beautiful style, but has nothing to say, represents a kind of arrested esthetic development; he is like a pianist who acquires a brilliant technique by playing finger-exercises, but never gives a concert.
Ayn RandStatism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by producing.
Ayn RandA โcollectiveโ mind does not exist. It is merely the sum of endless numbers of individual minds. If we have an endless number of individual minds who are weak, meek, submissive and impotent โ who renounce their creative supremacy for the sake of the โwholeโ and accept humbly that the โwholeโsโ verdict โ we donโt get a collective super-brain. We get only the weak, meek, submissive and impotent collective mind.
Ayn RandGold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it.
Ayn RandPotentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights; it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. When unlimited and unrestricted by individual rights, a government is man's deadliest enemy. It is not as protection against private actions, but against governmental actions that the Bill of Rights was written.
Ayn Rand