Words from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
"So you think money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the priniciple that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of looters who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is that what you consider evil?"
"An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced."
"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter or in spirit."
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is 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."
"A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue. A viler evil than to throw a man into a sacrificial furnace, is to demand that he leap in of his own will, and that he build the furnace besides."
"I work for nothing but my own profit -- which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their benefit at the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my benefit at the expense of theirs; I do not sacrifice my interests to them, nor do they sacrifice theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage..."
"...the purpose of a military fleet is to protect from violence the citizens who paid for it, which is a proper function of government."
"There was an air of luxury about the room, but it was the luxury of expert simplicity...This was Mullingan's concept of wealth, she thought -- the wealth of selection, not of accumulation."
"Mr. Rearden," said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, "if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling, but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort, the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders -- what would you tell him to do?
"I...don't know. What...could he do? What would you tell him?"
"To shrug."
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