The great creators - the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors - stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible... But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.
Ayn RandThe right to life is the source of all rights -- and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.
Ayn RandA story is an end in itself. It is not written to teach, sell, explain or destroy anything. It is not written even to entertain. It is written as a man is born - an organic whole, dictated only by its own laws and its own necessity - an end in itself, not a means to an end.
Ayn RandThe end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.
Ayn RandThere can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept 'just a few controls' is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of the governmentโs unlimited, arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement. As an example of this process, observe the present domestic policy of the United States.
Ayn Rand