Quotes About Principles

I am done with this creed of corruption.

Since Objectivism requires the use of one's mind, those who attempt to take broad principles and apply them unthinkingly and indiscriminately to the concretes of their own existence find that it cannot be done. They are then compelled either to reject Objectivism or to apply it.

Al aceptar el castigo, no por culpa alguna, sino por nuestras virtudes, traicionamos nuestro codigo e hicimos posible el suyo.

Una transacción (en el sentido inmoral del término) no consiste en abandonar la comodidad personal, sino en abandonar las convicciones personales.

I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

For the next few weeks there will be no political discussions in America: we have entered the Season of Platitudes—an election campaign. All issues, principles and definitions vanish during an election campaign. They dissolve into a fog of rubber terms that can mean anything to anyone—while the candidates compete for how to be misunderstood-in the greatest number of ways by the greatest number of people.

Quieres saber qué está mal en el mundo? Todos los desastres que han asolado al mundo provinieron del intento de los líderes de ignorar el hecho de que A es A.

The integrated sum of a man's basic values is his sense of life.

Un sistema social es un conjunto de principios moral-político-económicos encarnados en las leyes, las instituciones y el Gobierno de una sociedad que determinan las relaciones, las condiciones de asociación, entre los hombres que viven en un área geográfica determinada.

In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube.

If a man dies fighting for his own freedom, it is not a sacrifice: he is not willing to live as a slave; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of man who's willing.

How can one deal in truth when one deals with the public? I don't understand you, she said very quietly. Questions of truth do not enter into social issues. No principles have ever had any effect on society. What, then, directs men's actions? He shrugged. The expediency of the moment

Integrity does not consist of loyalty to ones subjective whims, but of loyalty to rational principles

It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money—and

If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: 'The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!

Every political system is based on some code of ethics.

It is not my function," said Wynand, "to help people preserve a self-respect they haven't got. You give them what they profess to like in public. I give them what they really like.

A "compromise" does not consist of doing something one dislikes, but of doing something one knows to be evil.

You who won't allow one per cent of impurity into an alloy of metal," the unforgotten voice was saying to him, "what have you allowed into your moral code?

I can say—not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political and esthetic roots—that 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. | ~~Ayn Rand "Philosophy: Who Needs It, 10

Morality is a code of black and white. When and if men attempt a compromise, it is obvious which side will necessarily lose and which will necessarily profit. Such are the reasons why—when one is asked: "Surely you don't think in terms of black-and-white, do you?"—the proper answer (in essence, if not in form) should be: "You're damn right I do!

An irrational society is a society of moral cowards- of men paralyzed by the loss of moral standards , principles, and goals

Those whom he kept for a month became his friends for life. They did not call themselves friends; they did not praise him to outsiders; they did not talk about him. They knew only, in a dim way, that it was not loyalty to him, but to the best within themselves.

If we aren't willing to pay a price for our values, if we aren't willing to make some sacrifices in order to realize them, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all.