Quotes from Alex Ayres

This country was not built... by men who sought handouts. John Galt speech, Atlas Shrugged, 1957

We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy or we cannot be content.

The choices we make, for good or ill, will affect the welfare of generations yet unborn. —State of the Union message, January 14, 1963

Your world is only the product of your sacrifices.

I am a trader. I earn what I get in trade for what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing less than what I earn. That is justice.

When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism

The Constitution of the United States . . . stressed not independence but interdependence, not the individual liberty of one but the indivisible liberty of all. —Independence Day address, July 4, 1962 (see INTERDEPENDENCE

In the final chapter of Profiles in Courage, Kennedy concludes: "The stories of past courage can define that ingredient—they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve

As man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul.

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.

Objectivism holds that the good must be defined by a rational standard of value, that pleasure is not a first cause, but only a consequence

This god, this one word: "I.

Ours is the "land of the free"—nobody denies that—nobody challenges it. (Maybe it is because we won't let other people testify.) —Roughing It, 1872, ch. 54 (commenting on mistreatment of Chinese in the West)

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values. Atlas

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum; whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of whose who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 1966