Miss Rand now tells us that what we have thought was right is really wrong. The lesson should have read: One for one and none for all.

We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic.

We have been at war almost constantly since the last century. And it has not helped our institutions. Congress no longer represents the people. The courts do not practice justice any more. The armies never stop playing at being the policemen of the world and of oil.

These little books I write, such as The End of Freedom, about the post-9/11 political climate in the United States, sell in the hundreds of thousands of copies. Whereas, I hear novels on marriage are not selling. This is perhaps not the judgment of God, but it is certainly that of history.

[ New York ] is a place that worships incompetence particularly if it's combined with energy and paranoid self-confidence. Only in a city like New York could Truman Capote have made it, or John Simon.

I'm not for real revolutions, because they always bring you the opposite of what you want. You very seldom get what you want if you have a violent revolution.

What matters finally is not the world's judgment of oneself but one's own judgment of the world.... Any writer who lacks this final arrogance will not survive very long in America.