You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island - it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today - and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it. β¨ Ayn Rand (1988). The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z, p.323, Penguin
More Author Quotes
- To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love - because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed value. The ma β¦ βΆ
- Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you? He answered, Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is bor β¦ βΆ
- This was the great clarity of being beyond emotion, after the reward of having felt everything one could feel. β¨ Ayn Rand (2016). Atlas Shrugged, p.130, Hamilton Books
- No value is higher than self-esteem, but you've invested it in counterfeit securities-and now your morality has caught you in a trap where you are forced to protect your self-esteem by fighting for t β¦ βΆ
- I think that when in doubt about the truth of an issue, it's safer and in better taste to select the least numerous of the adversaries. β¨ Ayn Rand (2009). We the Living, p.41, Penguin
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