"[F]rom the initial outline Ayn Rand provided, a very rich and powerful philosophy emerges – e.g., it solves such problems as science versus free will and moral responsibility, knowledge versus the fact of fallibility. Merely because Rands ideas were not born in academe or developed in full detail by her, it cannot be concluded that they are unsound."
Alice O'Connor, better known by her pen name Ayn Rand, was a Russian-American writer and philosopher. She is known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system which she named Objectivism.
"The trouble with the world today is philosophical: only the right philosophy can save us. But this party plagiarizes some of my ideas, mixes them with the exact opposite—with religionists, anarchists and every intellectual misfit and scum they can find—and call themselves libertarians and run for office."
"There is only one thing that matters and that well remember. The rest doesnt matter. I dont care what life is to be nor what it does to us. But it wont break us. Neither you nor me. Thats our only weapon. Thats the only banner we can hold against all those others around us. Thats all we have to know about the future."
"There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide."
"A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist. She smiled, her last smile, to so much that had been possible."
"Objectivism is a philosophical movement; since politics is a branch of philosophy, Objectivism advocates certain political principles — specifically, those of laissez-faire capitalism — as the consequence and the ultimate practical application of its fundamental philosophical principles. It does not regard politics as a separate or primary goal, that is: as a goal that can be achieved without a wider ideological context. . . . Objectivists are not "conservatives." We are radicals for capitalism; we are fighting for that philosophical base which capitalism did not have and without which it was doomed to perish."
"Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday... The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production."