Altruism does not mean mere kindness or generosity, but the sacrifice of the best among men to the worst, the sacrifice of virtues to flaws, of ability to incompetence, of progress to stagnation-and the subordinating of all life and of all values to the claims of anyone's suffering.

Capitalism has been called nationalistic - yet it is the only system that banished ethnicity, and made it possible, in the United States, for men of various, formerly antagonistic nationalities to live together in peace.

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

I am unwilling to be wholly good—and please don't regard me as wholly evil!

The government's only proper job is to protect individual rights against violence by force or fraud ... to protect men from foreign invaders ... to settle disputes among men according to objective laws ... The greatness of the Founding Fathers was how well they understood this issue and how close some of them came to understanding it perfectly.

She watched the prairies the rivers, the towns slipping past at an untouchable distance below - and she noted that the sense of detachment one feels when looking at the earth from a plane was the same sense she felt when looking at people: only her distance from people seemed longer. - Dagny Taggart

and he said her name to fill the space of five years.