Objectivism in Ten Quotes

1. "Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it?" (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, which is an almost verbatim statement of one of the ideas of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, although Rand spent her entire life denying that Nietzsche influenced her.)

2. "...for these truths hold good for everything that is, and not for some special genus apart from others. And all men use them, because they are true of being qua being. ... For a principle which every one must have who understand anything that is, is not a hypothesis. ... Evidently then such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect..." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged, quoting Aristotle.)

3. "No one survives in this valley by faking reality in any way." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

4. "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 seed stock 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." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

5. "I am, therefore I'll think." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

6. "My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists--and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

7. "Reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth. The most depraved sentence you can now utter to ask is: Whose reason? The answer is: Yours." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

8. "Life, Liberty and Property." (John Locke's statement of basic human rights, which America's Founders, lacking the political consensus to use that phrase, changed to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.")

9. "In the beginning was Logic, and Logic was God, and Logic was of God." (Alternate English translation of the original Greek version of the opening passage of The Gospel of John, The Christian Bible. Although a Platonic doctrine based on the Greek philosophical concept of logos, which means "the logical understanding understood expressed in words" but which is often mistranslated in Bibles as "The Word", this might as well be an Objectivist slogan.)

10. "I swear--by my life and my love of it--that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." (Rand, Atlas Shrugged.)

Top Ten Famous People Quotes

These are my 10 favorite quotes by random famous people:

1. "Always do right. This will please some people, and astonish the rest." - Mark Twain.

2. "Lack of money is the root of all evil." - Mark Twain.

3. "Suppose you were a member of Congress. And suppose you were an idiot. But I repeat myself." - Mark Twain.

4. "The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated." - Mark Twain.

5. "Learn like you'll live forever, live like you'll die tomorrow." - Mohatma Ghandi.

6. "Good artists copy. Great artists steal." - Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, himself quoting Pablo Picasso, while discussing the Mac Operating System.

7. "Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken." - Oscar Wilde.

8. "It's a republic, if you can keep it." - Benjamin Franklin, when asked what form of government the Constitutional Convention had chosen for the USA.

9. "You are never alone, when alone." - Cicero.

10. "I'm gay, and that's a good thing." - quote attributed to the first openly gay Mayor of Berlin, Germany.

Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche - The Top Ten Quotes

These are the top ten (my ten favorite) quotes said by philosophers Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche:

1. "How can you return to me if you do not leave me?" - Nietzsche

2. "Build it as a monument to that spirit which is yours . . . and could have been mine." - Rand

3. "Sometimes, when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you." - Nietzsche

4. "Insist on it." - Rand

5. "God is dead, and we are the ones who killed Him." - Nietzsche

6. "Are you happy, Mr. Superman?" - Rand (Yes, this is Rand, not Nietzsche - she is referring to him. It's one of my favorite lines from The Fountainhead.)

7. "I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." - Rand

8. "A philosopher must always be forgiven for his first followers." - Nietzsche

9. "It's the soul, Peter, the soul, not whips or swords or fire or guns." - Rand

10. "He didn't want to make money, only to get it." - Rand

The Top Ten Virtues from The John Galt Speech in Atlas Shrugged

 I have not seen a simple list of the virtues enumerated in Atlas Shrugged, so I made this list:

1. Reason

2. Purpose

3. Self-Esteem

4. Rationality

5. Independence

6. Integrity

7. Honesty

8. Justice

9. Productiveness

10. Pride

For Ayn Rand's explication of these virtues, see pages 932-33, Atlas Shrugged, Signet Paperback Edition.

One can further subdivide this list: Reason, Purpose and Self-Esteem are "the Big Three Virtues," Rationality, Independence and Integrity are "The Intellectual Virtues," and Honesty, Justice, Productiveness and Pride are "The Social Virtues." These three sets of values comprise the bedrock foundation of Objectivist morality.