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The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z

Book by Ayn Rand · 35 quotes · Men, Rights, Values

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The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z Quotes

“America’s founding ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more-and nothing less. The rest-everything that America achieved, everything she became, everything 'noble and just,' and heroic, and great, and unprecedented in human history-was the logical consequence of fidelity to that one principle.”

HumansAmericaIndividualPrinciplesRightsAchievementConsequenceIdealsNobleNovelistsUsaLogicalHeroicFoundingHuman HistoryFidelityUnprecedentedIndividual Rights
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“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.”

WorldI CanCountryStatesAmericaPoliticalUnitedMoralPrinciplesUnited StatesRootsOriginalsPatrioticEthicalUnited States Of AmericaMetaphysicalFoundingWorld History
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“The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose.”

MenLifeFeelingsPurposeOrderEvilHe ManCapableMercyNovelistsProductiveUrgesPurpose Driven LifeDriftingControl Of Your LifePurposelessness
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“Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people's savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments.”

PeopleGovernmentActionSupportPolicyCitizensSpendingScalesSavingArtificialExpansionInflationDeficitSavingsRobbersPlunderFiscal PolicyDeficit Spending
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“The social system based on and consonant with the altruist morality-with the code of self-sacrifice- is socialism, in all or any of its variants: fascism, Nazism, communism. All of them treat man as a sacrificial animal to be immolated for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the society, the state.”

MenSelfStatesSocialAnimalSacrificeGroupsMoralityBenefitsTreatsSocialismCommunismCodeFascismTribesSelf SacrificeNazismSocial SystemsConsonants
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“The majority of those who are loosely identified by the term 'liberals' are afraid to let themselves discover that what they advocate is statism. They want to keep all the advantages and effects of capitalism, while destroying the cause, and they want to establish statism without its necessary effects. They do not want to know or to admit that they are the champions of dictatorship and slavery.”

KnowsWantCausesTermEffectsCapitalismAdvantageSlaveryMajorityChampionDestroyingDictatorship
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“Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion. To declare that “everybody is white” or “everybody is black” or “everybody is neither white nor black, but gray,” is not a moral judgment, but an escape from the responsibility of moral judgment.”

TwoBlackWhiteResponsibilityMoralJudgmentOppositesToleranceGrayCondemnationEvasionMoral JudgmentTwo Opposites
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“If men want to oppose war, it is statism that they must oppose. So long as they hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) alleged “good” can justify it-there can be no peace within a nation and no peace among nations.”

IfsMenWantLongWarIndividualForceNationsNotionCollectivesJustifyIndividualismCollectivismTribalismPeace WithinIndividuationFodderCollectivity
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“Individualism regards man - every man - as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful co-existence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights - and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members.”

MenFormIndividualExistenceRightsGroupsSocietyMembersBasesRegardIndependentEvery ManRationalPeacefulRecognitionCivilizedCooperationAssociationIndividualismEntitySovereignIndividual RightsCivilized Society
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“A majority vote is not an epistemological validation of an idea. Voting is merely a proper political device--within a strictly, constitutionall y delimited sphere of action--for choosing the practical means of implementing a society’s basic principles. But those principles are not determined by vote.”

MeanIdeasActionPoliticalPrinciplesVoteMajorityDeterminedPracticalsVotingDevicesSpheresValidationBasic PrinciplesImplementingMajority Vote
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“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.”

MenGivingAbleValuesWishDealsPrinciplesProduceMaterialsShapesToolsTradeGoodsObjectivismAtlasValue Of MoneyMoney Is The Root Of All EvilMoney Is EvilMoochers
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“The American businessmen, as a class, have demonstrated the greatest productive genius and the most spectacular achievements ever recorded in the economic history of mankind. What reward did they receive from our culture and its intellectuals? The position of a hated, persecuted minority. The position of a scapegoat for the evils of the bureaucrats.”

CultureEvilBusinessClassEconomicMankindPositionGeniusAchievementRewardsHatedProductiveMinoritiesBusinessmanSpectacularBureaucratsPersecutedScapegoatEconomic History
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“Just as a concept becomes a unit when integrated with others into a wider concept, so a genus becomes a single unit, a species, when integrated with others into a wider genus. For instance, “table” is a species of the genus “furniture,” which is a species of the genus “household goods,” which is a species of the genus “man-made objects.” “Man” is a species of the genus “animal,” which is a species of the genus “organism,” which is a species of the genus “entity.”

SpeciesEntityConceptGenus
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