Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.
- Topic: Responsibility, Society, Thinking
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from Ayn Rand
People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked.
The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default; by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.
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.
America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the “common good,” but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.
If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences.
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.
The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.
More on These Topics
We know of no culture that has said, articulately, that there is no difference between men and women except in the way they contribute to the creation of the next generation.
We are all one family in the world. Building a community that empowers everyone to attain their full potential through each of us respecting each other's dignity, rights and responsibilities makes thee world a better place to live.
Next to the assumption of power is the responsibility of relinquishing it.
Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.
Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself—and be lenient to everybody else.
In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
You and only you are responsible for your life choices and decisions.
I never encounter anything except my responsibility.
Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions but follows religiously the new.
The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.
You don't have to be big or well known to be great.
You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.
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.
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.
...the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be...The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self.
The overwhelming importance of the atmosphere means that there are no longer any frontiers to defend against pollution, attack, or propaganda. It means, further, that only by a deep patriotic devotion to one’s country can there be a hope of the kind of protection of the whole planet, which is necessary for the survival of the people of other countries.
The greatest evils in the world will not be carried out by men with guns, but by men in suits sitting behind desks.
Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.
It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.
Sow a thought, and you reap an act; Sow an act, and you reap a habit; Sow a habit, and you reap character; Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.
There are only two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it.
Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.
All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.
The truth has no defense against a fool determined to believe a lie.
Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.
I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.
You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.
Drink does not drown care, but waters it, and makes it grow faster.
