Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics - a rational ethics - as a precondition of rebirth.
Ayn RandI am an intransigent atheist, though not a militant one. This means that I am not fighting against religion - I am fighting for reason.
Ayn RandThe social system based on and consonant with the altruist morality-with the code of self-sacrifice- is socialism, in all or any of its variants: fascism, Nazism, communism. All of them treat man as a sacrificial animal to be immolated for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the society, the state.
Ayn RandNot selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think heโs honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but heโs great in the eyes of others.
Ayn RandShe knew that even pain can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the witness.
Ayn RandAt first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled.
Ayn Rand