America's founding Ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more - and nothing less.
Ayn RandIn all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone. An architect needs clients, but he does not subordinate his work to their wishes. They need him, but they do not order a house just to give him commission. Men exchange their work by free, mutual consent to mutual advantage when their personal interests agree and they both desire the exchange.
Ayn RandThere were things in my past which I have not liked. But all the things of which I was proud will remain.
Ayn RandI am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.
Ayn RandI love you. As the same value, as the same expression, with the same pride and the same meaning as I love my work, my mills, my Metal, my hours at a desk, at a furnace, in a laboratory, in an ore mine, as I love my ability to work, as I love the act of sight and knowledge, as I love the action of my mind when it solves a chemical equation or grasps a sunrise, as I love the things I've made and the things I've felt, as *my* product, as *my* choice, as a shape of my world, as my best mirror, as the wife I've never had, as that which makes all the rest of it possible: as my power to live.
Ayn Rand