Quotes About Individualism

The laws say that men may not write unless the Council of Vocations bid them so. May we be forgiven!

The crowd had stared at him and given up angrily, finding no satisfaction. He did not look crushed and he did not look defiant. He looked impersonal and calm. He was not like a public figure in a public place; he was like a man alone in his own room, listening to the radio.

My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose. Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish . I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on their altars.

Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

there can be no justification for a society in which a man is expected to manufacture the weapons for his own murderers.

Make no mistake about the character of mystics. To undercut your consciousness has always been their only purpose throughout the ages - and power, the power to rule you by force, has always been their only lust (John Galt)

No action could be lower or more futile than for one person to throw upon another the burden of his abdication of choice.

Money is made—before it can be looted or mooched—made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

Reason is not automatic, those who deny it cannot be conquered by it

If everybody were compelled to have the proper kind of education, we'd have a better world. If we force people to do good, they will be free to be happy.

HOWARD ROARK LAUGHED. He stood naked at the edge of a cliff. The lake lay far below him. A frozen explosion of granite burst in flight to the sky over motionless water. The water seemed immovable, the stone flowing. The stone had the stillness of one brief moment in battle when thrust meets thrust and the currents are held in a pause more dynamic than motion. The stone glowed, wet with sunrays.

To be free, a man must be free from his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.

I have, let's say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I've chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I'm only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.

This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before!

Yet no penny of his wealth had been obtained by force or fraud; he was guilty of nothing, except that he earned his own fortune and never forgot that it was his.

If you believe that you have the right to force me—use your guns openly. I will not help you to disguise the nature of your action.

They say that it's hard for men to agree. You'd be surprised how easy it is—when both parties hold as their moral absolute that neither exists for the sake of the other and that reason is their only means of trade.

The laws say that none among men may be alone, ever and at any time, for this is the great transgression and the root of all evil.

No principle ever filled anybody's milk bottle

And, after all, you've got to live." "Not that way," said Roark.

Por ir a ayudar a una vecina gravemente enferma y a sus dos niños pequeños, se ganó este comentario de un jemer rojo: «No es su deber ayudarla, al contrario, esto demuestra que todavía tiene usted piedad y sentimientos de amistad. Hay que renunciar a esos sentimientos y extirpar de su mente las inclinaciones individualistas. Y ahora, vuelva a su casa»

He was the type of person who believed he alone could do the job adequately and afterward complained that no one had helped.

Despite humane intentions, an overemphasis on personal responsibility for strengthening family values encourages a way of thinking that leads to moralizing rather than mobilizing for concrete reforms.

European demographer Anton Kuijsten comments that rather than ordering from "the standard life course menu, as people used to do," an individual now "composes his or her history à la carte." And marriage, "the obligatory entrée" during the 1950s, "has become the optional dessert.