Do you know the hallmark of a second rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire. They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes,thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them - while you'd give a year of my life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them. They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear. They have no way of knowing what he feels when surrounded by inferiors - hatred? no, not hatred, but boredom - the terrible, hopeless, draining, paralyzing boredom. Of what account are praise and adulation from men whom you don't respect? Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?"
"I've felt it all my life," she said.
Tags: inspirational achievement mediocrity objectivism atlas-shrugged second-handers
We, Equality 7-2521, were not happy in those year in the Home of the Students. It was not that the learning was too hard for us. It was that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them. The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked at us.
Ayn RandTags: individuality intelligence happiness teachers objectivism schooling students
If you know that this life is all that you have, wouldn't you make the most of it?
Ayn RandTags: life objectivism ayn-rand
I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.
Christopher HitchensTags: individualism selfishness objectivism ayn-rand libertarianism
Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others.
Ayn RandTags: political objectivism
To sum it all up, the [Ayn] Rand belief system looks like this:
1. Facts are facts: things can be absolutely right or absolutely wrong, as determined by reason.
2. According to my reasoning, I am absolutely right.
3. Charity is immoral.
4. Pay for your own fucking schools.
Tags: philosophy cynicism objectivism ayn-rand
We are born into this world unarmed - our mind is our only weapon.
Ayn RandTags: philosophy objectivism
Saint Petersburg in revolt gave us Vladimir Nabokov, Isaiah Berlin, and Ayn Rand. The first was a novelist, the second a philosopher. The third was neither but thought she was both.
Corey RobinTags: objectivism ayn-rand
To irrational principles, one cannot be loyal. Ideas that are not derived from reality cannot be consistently practiced in reality.
--as quoted by Leonard Peikoff in "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
Tags: reason objectivism rational-thought
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
Gore VidalTags: evil greed objectivism ayn-rand
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