“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked.”
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged (Primary source)
In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand explores Objectivism, a philosophy of rational self-interest. The story follows a dystopian United States where successful innovators, led by John Galt, go on strike to protest excessive government regulation and taxation.
“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”
— Ayn Rand Primary source“I don’t intend to build in order to have clients. I intend to have clients in order to build.”
— Ayn Rand Primary source“Who will let you? That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”
— Ayn Rand Primary source“Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense. An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.
— Ayn Rand Primary source“You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”
— Albert Einstein Primary source“One loses everything when one loses one’s sense of humor.”
— Ayn Rand Primary source