If parasitism, favoritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence.

The worst guilt is to accept an undeserved guilt — and that is what you have been doing all your life.

The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative. If some "pacifist" society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it.

The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals.

A good novel is an indivisible sum; every scene, sequence and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization.

She had learned, in the slums of her childhood, that honest people were never touchy about the matter of being trusted.

The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose.