So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. . . . When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him by force. It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only against the man who starts its use. No, I do not share his evil or sink to his concept of morality: I merely grant him his choice, destruction, the only destruction he had the right to choose: his own.
Ayn RandThe charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: โMerry Christmasโ-not โWeep and Repent.โ And the good will is expressed in a material, earthly form-by giving presents to one's friends, or by sending them cards in token of remembrance . . . .
Ayn RandIf there is any one proof of a man's incompetence, it is the stagnant mentality of a worker who, doing some small routine job in a vast undertaking, does not care to look beyond the lever of a machine, does not choose to know how the machine got there or what makes his job possible, and proclaims that the management of the undertaking is parasitical and unnecessary.
Ayn RandFor centuries, the mystics of spirit had existed by running a protection racket - by making life on earth unbearable, then charging you for consolation and relief, by forbidding all the virtues that make existence possible, then riding on the shoulders of your guilt, by declaring production and joy to be sins, then collecting blackmail from the sinners.
Ayn RandWhen one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer. There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in matter nor in spiritโand if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it.
Ayn Rand