A society that tolerates intimidation as a means of settling disputes…loses its moral rights to exist as a social system, and its collapse does not take long to follow.
- Topic: Society
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from Ayn Rand
When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, butt in favors - When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you - When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - You may know that your society is doomed.
I could not understand how any man could be so brutalized as to claim the right to dispose of the lives of others, nor how any man could be so lacking in self-esteem as to grant to others the right to dispose of his life.
Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.
Words are a lens to focus one's mind.
More on Society
A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country.
If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences.
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bond together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship.
As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one is useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
I propose to raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly of the truth.
When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals?
To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.
It never ceases to amaze me: We all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.
All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.