Quotes About Objectivism

A basic premise is an absolute that permits no co-operation with its antithesis and tolerates no tolerance.

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.

Everything is something...

Of all Americans who have appeared on the nation's postage stamps, Ayn Rand is probably the only one to have thought that the United States government has no business delivering mail.

Each man must live as an end in himself and follow his own rational self-interest.

Here's a free tip," his father says: "The feds aren't terribly impressed by infantile egoism. In fact, if Objectivism were at the center of human philosophical discourse rather than the fringes, we wouldn't be here—the Big Zap would have arrived decades ago. But I'm going to be generous and let you write down the ghost of Ayn Rand as a brain fart. I won't bring her up again if you don't.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

She [Ayn Rand] had to declare that....altruism was despicable, that only self-interest is good and noble. (About Ayn Rand)

What did Miss Rand in was her anxiety to theologize her beliefs. She was an eloquent and persuasive antistatist, and if only she had left it at that—but no, she had to declare that God did not exist, that altruism was despicable, that only self-interest is good and noble. She risked, in fact, giving to capitalism that bad name that its enemies have done so well in giving it; and that is a pity.

It is surely gratuitous to point out that the author suffered from an edifice complex (writing of Ayn Rand)

How long, she asked, was this fraudulent stage-show called science to go on producing its 'closer and closer' approximations to an 'absolute and disinterested' truth? How long was the 'déception rationale', the con trick of objectivism to be practiced?

Her philosophy, Objectivism, advocates reason, individualism, and personal happiness. Conservatives are more likely to favor faith, tradition, and duty as core values. Politically, Objectivism is classically liberal or libertarian. It expresses a worldview associated with the Enlightenment. Ayn Rand fundamentally rejected the conservative-liberal distinction in culture.

The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash—that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value.[13]

Ayn Rand was the godmother of laissez faire capitalism, the Virgin Mary of Libertarianism. She died in 1982. She spent her life attempting to turn selfishness into a religion so that people could claim their greed was grounded in the nature of man. Her heinous ideas and crappy books have given politicians philosophical cover to promote their "greed is good" agenda for decades.

I give out Atlas Shrugged as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it.

You know what that big number was? It was 1957. It's not the year I was born. I'm a little older than that. I wish it was the year I was born. It was the year one of my favorite books was written: 'Atlas Shrugged.' Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand was a genius.

At Stanford he read both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and was seduced by Ayn Rand's romantic view of free-market capitalism as well as her view of businessmen as heroic.

My position is that Rand doesn't have all the right answers, but she does have all the right questions

Objectivism comes on, sometimes, as if the most important issue you have to understand is the issue of egoism versus altruism. But thats nowhere near the beginning of the process.