 Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. |
| The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see. |
| It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master. |
| Government "help" to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off. |
| Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values. |
| People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk. |
| Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone. |
| When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized. |
| The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. |
| Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual). |
| Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future. |
| Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives. |
| A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. |
| Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property. |
| Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started. |
| Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself. |
| Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth. |
| There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist. |
| Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another. |
| We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. |
