Book detail: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition) is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This book delves into the philosophical ideas of Ayn Rand, offering an in-depth analysis of her principles and their implications. It is a collection of essays and lectures that reflect on the nature of reality, the role of reason, and the importance of individualism.
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“Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. ... To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others suffer in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“A rational process is a moral process.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“For centuries, the mystics of spirit had existed by running a protection racket - by making life on earth unbearable, then charging you for consolation and relief, by forbidding all the virtues that make existence possible, then riding on the shoulders of your guilt, by declaring production and joy to be sins, then collecting blackmail from the sinners.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Do not help your jailers to pretend that their jail is your natural state of existence.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Don't bother to examine a folly-ask yourself only what it accomplishes.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone. An architect needs clients, but he does not subordinate his work to their wishes. They need him, but they do not order a house just to give him commission. Men exchange their work by free, mutual consent to mutual advantage when their personal interests agree and they both desire the exchange.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“There's only one passion in most artists more violent than their desire for admiration: their fear of identifying the nature of such admiration as they do receive.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“The symbol of all relationships among such men, the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is the trader. We, who live by values, not by loot, are traders, both in matter and in spirit. A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man's capacity to live.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man's values, it has to be earned.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“I am not 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.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“So you think that money is the root of all evil? [...] Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. 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?”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch-or build a cyclotron-without a knowledge of his aim and of the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Only the man who extols the purity of love devoid of desire, is capable of the depravity of a desire devoid of love.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“An inventor is a man who asks 'Why?' of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Now look at me! Take a good look! I was born and I knew I was alive and I knew what I wanted. What do you think is alive in me? Why do you think I'm alive? Because I have a stomach and eat and digest the food? Because I breathe and work and produce more food to digest? Or because I know what I want, and that something which knows how to want—isn't that life itself? And who—in this damned universe—who can tell me why I should live for anything but for that which I want?”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors - between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Life is a value to be bought and thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man's first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgement and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been calle anti social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched".”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Sacrifice is the surrender of that which you value in favor of which you dont”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Whether you know the shape of a pebble or the structure of a solar system, the anxioms remain the same: that it exists and that you know it.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“... reason accepts no commandments.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Capitalism demands the best of every man - his rationality - and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know its nature. To love money is to known and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money - and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Let no man posture as an advocate of peace if he proposes or supports any social system that initiates the use of force against individual men, in any form.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live-that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values-that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“But Aristotle's philosophy was the intellect's Declaration of Independence.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“The first society in history whose leaders were neither Attilas nor Witch Doctors, a society led, dominated and created by the Producers, was the United States of America.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“A free mind and a free market are corollaries.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
“When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him, by force.”
Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)