Objectivism Quotes

“An individual can be hurt in countless ways by other men's irrationality, dishonesty, injustice. Above all, he can be disappointed, perhaps grievously, by the vices of a person he had once trusted or loved. But as long as his property is not expropriated and he remains unmolested physically, the damage he sustains is essentially spiritual, not physical; in such a case, the victim alone has the power and the responsibility of healing his wounds. He remains free: free to think, to learn from his experiences, to look elsewhere for human relationships; he remains free to start afresh and to pursue his happiness.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“Every argument for God and every attribute ascribed to Him rests on a false metaphysical premise. None can survive for a moment on a correct metaphysics....

Existence exists, and only existence exists. Existence is a primary: it is uncreated, indestructible, eternal. So if you are to postulate something beyond existence—some supernatural realm—you must do it by openly denying reason, dispensing with definitions, proofs, arguments, and saying flatly, “To Hell with argument, I have faith.” That, of course, is a willful rejection of reason.

Objectivism advocates reason as man’s sole means of knowledge, and therefore, for the reasons I have already given, it is atheist. It denies any supernatural dimension presented as a contradiction of nature, of existence. This applies not only to God, but also to every variant of the supernatural ever advocated or to be advocated. In other words, we accept reality, and that’s all.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“The man who waits for reality to write the truth inside his soul waits in vain.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“The artist is the closest man comes to being God.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“In any compromise between food and poison,” Ayn Rand writes, “it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“The principles of morality are a product not of feeling, but of cognition.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“Evil, for Objectivism, means the willful ignorance or defiance of reality. This has to mean: that which cannot deal with reality, that which is whim-ridden, context-dropping, self-contradictory. Evil is consistent in only one regard: its essence is consistently at war with all the values and virtues human life requires.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“[There is] a widespread approach to ideas which Objectivism repudiates altogether: agnosticism. I mean this term in a sense which applies to the question of God, but to many other issues also, such as extra-sensory perception or the claim that the stars influence man’s destiny. In regard to all such claims, the agnostic is the type who says, “I can’t prove these claims are true, but you can’t prove they are false, so the only proper conclusion is: I don’t know; no one knows; no one can know one way or the other.”

The agnostic viewpoint poses as fair, impartial, and balanced. See how many fallacies you can find in it. Here are a few obvious ones: First, the agnostic allows the arbitrary into the realm of human cognition. He treats arbitrary claims as ideas proper to consider, discuss, evaluate—and then he regretfully says, “I don’t know,” instead of dismissing the arbitrary out of hand. Second, the onus-of-proof issue: the agnostic demands proof of a negative in a context where there is no evidence for the positive. “It’s up to you,” he says, “to prove that the fourth moon of Jupiter did not cause your sex life and that it was not a result of your previous incarnation as the Pharaoh of Egypt.” Third, the agnostic says, “Maybe these things will one day be proved.” In other words, he asserts possibilities or hypotheses with no jot of evidential basis.

The agnostic miscalculates. He thinks he is avoiding any position that will antagonize anybody. In fact, he is taking a position which is much more irrational than that of a man who takes a definite but mistaken stand on a given issue, because the agnostic treats arbitrary claims as meriting cognitive consideration and epistemological respect. He treats the arbitrary as on a par with the rational and evidentially supported. So he is the ultimate epistemological egalitarian: he equates the groundless and the proved. As such, he is an epistemological destroyer. The agnostic thinks that he is not taking any stand at all and therefore that he is safe, secure, invulnerable to attack. The fact is that his view is one of the falsest—and most cowardly—stands there can be.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“The rational (the good) has nothing to gain from the irrational (the evil),” observes Ayn Rand, “except a share of its failures and crimes. . . .”17”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“The mental practice that underlies the anti-effort attitude is the act of evasion, of blanking out some fact of reality which one dislikes. This act constitutes the essence of irrationality and, therefore, of evil. Evasion is the Objectivist equivalent of a mortal sin. It is the only such sin that we recognize, because it is what makes possible every other form of moral corruption. 27”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“Ayn Rand defines “value” as “that which one acts to gain and/or keep.”3 “Value” denotes the object of an action: it is that which some entity’s action is directed to acquiring or preserving”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“Science, indeed, is nothing more than the conceptual unravelling of sensory data; it has no other primary evidence from which to proceed.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“In a primacy-of-consciousness philosophy, virtue consists of allegiance to the ruling consciousness, such as God or society. In Ayn Rand’s philosophy, virtue consists of allegiance to existence; it consists of a man’s recognizing facts and then acting accordingly.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“Vice, in the Objectivist view, is not a rewarding policy; it is unconsciousness-willful, self-induced unconsciousness, while one continues to move around and function. To a conscious organism no course of behavior can be more dangerous.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“Justice consists first not in condemning, but in admiring—and then in expressing one’s admiration explicitly and in fighting for those one admires. It consists first in acknowledging the good: intellectually, in reaching an objective moral verdict; then existentially, in defending the good—speaking out, making one’s verdict known, championing publicly the men who are rational (one also praises them to their face, if there is a context to indicate that this would be a value to the person rather than an intrusion).”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“The subjectivist school, to which we may now turn, holds that values, like concepts and definitions, are creations of consciousness independent of reality.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“The term “objective,” let me stress here, does not apply to all values, but only to values chosen by man. The automatic values that govern internal bodily functions or the behavior of plants and animals are not the product of a conceptual process. Such values, therefore, are outside the terminology of “objective,” “intrinsic,” or “subjective.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“Value requires a valuer—and moral value, therefore, presupposes a certain kind of estimate made by man; it presupposes an act of evaluation. Such an act, as we know, is possible only because man faces a fundamental alternative. It is possible only if man chooses to pursue a certain goal, which then serves as his standard of value.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“In many respects, the West has not recovered from the Middle Ages.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve-Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man’s virtues ... 20”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“A valid code of morality, Ayn Rand concludes, a code based on reason and proper to man, must hold man’s life as its standard of value. “All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil.”16”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“The reason-emotion dichotomy, however, cuts off this possibility; by teaching that emotions are independent of thought, it makes permanent the feeling of metaphysical helplessness.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“emotions differ from thought and action: they are an automatic function. But a man does choose his emotions—ultimately. He does it by virtue of his ability to think, and if necessary to rethink an issue, rejecting an invalid idea at the root of some feeling and replacing it by a new conclusion.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“Philosophy. A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation—or let your subconscious accumulate”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“In particular, he does not automatically value or pursue self-preservation. The evidence of this fact is overwhelming; it includes not only deliberate suicides, but also people’s frequent hostility to the most elementary life-sustaining practices. As examples, one may consider the Middle Ages, or the more mystical countries of the Near and Far East, or even the leaders of the modern West. For a human being, the desire to live and the knowledge of what life requires are an achievement, not a biological gift.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“In an objective approach, force and value are opposites. The goal of a proper society, accordingly, is not to compel truth or virtue (which would be a contradiction in terms), but to make them possible—by ensuring that men are left free.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“To satisfy this need, one must recognize that philosophy is a system of ideas. By its nature as an integrating science, it cannot be a grab bag of isolated issues. All philosophic questions are interrelated. One may not, therefore, raise any such questions at random, without the requisite context. If one tries the random approach, then questions (which one has no means of answering) simply proliferate in all directions.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“This can be illustrated by reference to any version of idealism. But let us confine the discussion here to the popular notion of God. Is God the creator of the universe? Not if existence has primacy over consciousness. Is God the designer of the universe? Not if A is A. The alternative to “design” is not “chance.” It is causality. Is God omnipotent? Nothing and no one can alter the metaphysically given. Is God infinite? “Infinite” does not mean large; it means larger than any specific quantity, i.e., of no specific quantity. An infinite quantity would be a quantity without identity. But A is A. Every entity, accordingly, is finite; it is limited in the number of its qualities and in their extent; this applies to the universe as well.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“Whenever men expect reality to conform to their wish simply because it is their wish, they are doomed to metaphysical disappointment. This leads them to the dichotomy: my dream vs. the actual which thwarts it; or the inner vs. the outer; or value vs. fact; or the moral vs. the practical. The broadest name of the dichotomy is the “spiritual” realm vs. the “material” realm.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“To build a happy marriage, one must know one’s values and one’s partner, one must work to identify, cooperate, communicate; to wreck one’s marriage, one need merely take it for granted and give one’s partner no thought at all. To sculpt the David, one needs the genius of Michelangelo; to smash it, only some rampaging barbarians. To create the United States required the intellect and the painstaking debates of the Founding Fathers; to run it into the ground, only the crew of anti-intellectuals now ensconced in Washington.”
― Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand