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Exlpore more Ethics quotes
"The widespread assumption that ethical behavior takes the fun out of life is false. In actuality, living ethically ensures that relationships in our lives, including encounters with strangers, nurture our spiritual growth."
"I have a yearning for my beautiful country, and I love its people because of their misery. But if my people rose, simulated by plunder and motivated by what they call "patriotic spirit" to murder, and invaded my neighbour's country, then upon the committing of any human atrocity I would hate my people and my country."
"I've never seen exquisite fallen beings, and I never shall see them, but such creatures as that painted Frenchwoman at the counter with the ringlets are vermin to my mind, and all fallen women are the same.' 'But the Magdalen?' 'Ah, drop that! Christ would never have said those words if He had known how they would be abused. Of all the Gospel those words are the only ones remembered."
"It isn't a natural thing to keep on worrying about the morality of one's material prosperity. These are proclivities superinduced by modern conditions of the conscience. There is a natural resistance in every healthy human being to such distressful heart-searchings."
"The task of the moral philosopher-thinker is to support and strengthen the voice of human conscience, to recognize what is good or what is bad for people, whether they are good or bad for society in a period of evolution. May be a "voice crying in the wilderness", but only if that voice remains lively and uncompromising, it is possible to transform the desert into fertile land."
"You cannot sensibly expect a starving 'God-fearing' man to honor the 8th commandment."
"Roman Catholicism is a broken and utterly desperate thing, capable only of malignant mischief in our awakening world."
"Never mistaken humility for foolishness, nor pride for power."
Explore more quotes by Ayn Rand
"It was as if a volcano were cracking open, yet the people at the foot of the mountain ignored the sudden fissures, the black fumes, the boiling trickles, and went on believing that their only danger was to acknowledge the reality of these signs."
"Well, whose opinion did you take? "I don't ask for opinions." "What do you go by?"Judgment. "Well, whose judgment did you take? "Mine. "But whom did you consult about it?". "Nobody."
"Every form of happiness if one, every desire is driven by the same motor-by our love for a single value, for the highest potentiality of our own existence-and every achievement is an expression of it."
"It was his self-esteem she had sought to destroy, knowing that a man who surrenders his value is at the mercy of anyone's will; it was his moral purity she had struggled to breach, it was his confident rectitude she had wanted to shatter by means of the poison of guilt-as if, were he to collapse, his depravity would give her a right to hers."
"It's easier to donate a few thousands to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence-such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence."
"There is no difference between the principles, policies and practical results of socialism-and those of any historical or prehistorical tyranny. Socialism is merely democratic absolute monarchy-that is, a system of absolutism without a fixed head, open to seizure of power by all corners, by any ruthless climber, opportunist, adventurer, demagogue or thug."
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably, the man who respects it has earned it."
"He did not know that he was expected to attempt to buy his way into society and that they anticipated the pleasure of rejecting him. He had no time to notice their disappointment."
"This is pity, he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue."
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