Ideas, in a free society, are not a crime- and neither can they serve as the justification of a crime.
Ayn RandHe stepped to the window and pointed to the skyscrapers of the city. He said that we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when we would see the lights of New York go out, we would know that our job was done.
Ayn RandThese are the things before me. And as I stand here at the door of glory, I look behind me for the last time. I look upon the history of men, which I have learned from the books, and I wonder. It was a long story, and the spirit which moved it was the spirit of manโs freedom. But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a manโs freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. This and nothing else.
Ayn RandThey talked about nothing in particular, sentences that had meaning only in the sound of the voices, in warm gaiety, in the ease of complete relaxation.
Ayn RandThrough all the centuries of the worship of the mindless, whatever stagnation humanity chose to endure, whatever brutality to practice-it was only by the grace of the men who perceived that wheat must have water in order to grow, that stones laid in a curve will form an arch, that two and two make four, that love is not served by torture and life is not fed by destruction-only by the grace of those men did the rest of them learn to experience moments when they caught the spark of being human.
Ayn Rand