Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue.

It is a policeman’s duty to retrieve stolen property and return it to its owners. But when robbery becomes the purpose of the law, and the policeman’s duty becomes, not protection, but the plunder of property - then it is an outlaw who has to become a policeman.

The American businessmen, as a class, have demonstrated the greatest productive genius and the most spectacular achievements ever recorded in the economic history of mankind. What reward did they receive from our culture and its intellectuals? The position of a hated, persecuted minority. The position of a scapegoat for the evils of the bureaucrats.

Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go.

Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday. In spite of its religious form (giving thanks to God for a good harvest), its essential, secular meaning is a celebration of successful production. It is a producers’ holiday. The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production. Abundance is (or was and ought to be) America’s pride-just as it is the pride of American parents that their children need never know starvation.

Politically, the goal of today’s dominant trend is statism. Philosophically, the goal is the obliteration of reason; psychologically, it is the erosion of ambition.

Through all the years that I spent formulating my philosophical system, I was looking desperately for “intelligent agreement” or at least for “intelligent disagreement.” I found neither. Today, I am not looking for “intelligent disagreement” any longer ... What I am looking for is intelligent agreement.