The Virtue of Selfishness Quotes

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.

To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love – because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.

The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.

The freedom of speech of private individuals includes the right not to agree, not to listen and not to finance one’s own antagonists.

Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.

Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason, can exist only as parasites on the thinking of others.

Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer – and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

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).

In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them.

He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see.