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.
It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own.
- Topic: Leadership
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from Ayn Rand
The United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.
If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences.
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.
Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgment. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man's mind.
Words are a lens to focus one's mind.
More on Leadership
This is the thing that I was born to do.
I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace, and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.
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?
Let no guilty man escape, if it can be avoided. No personal considerations should stand in the way of performing a public duty.
