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"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)." -- Ayn Rand
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." -- Jefferson et al, The Declaration of Independence
"The fact that most people think that ... pursuing one's own self-interest equates to behaving brutally or irrationally, is, as Ms. Rand noted, a 'psychological confession' on their part. In fact it is againstone's own long-term self-interest to behave irrationally or trample others. Such actions are the exact opposite of selfish -- they're self-destructive." -- Wayne Dunn
(Emphasis added. Criminals and other sociopaths do not think in terms of how their actions affect the society around them and set bad examples for others. Nor do they empathize with others, certainly not their victims. And they certainly don't feel the pride of honest achievement or of helping to build civilization.)
"They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone--the most prehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men." -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (Olmstead v. U.S.)
"A man's rights are not violated by a private individual's refusal to deal with him." -- Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness
"There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob." -- Ayn Rand
"Over himself, over his own mind and body, the individual is sovereign" -- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), "Introductory"
"The right to the pursuit of happiness IS the right to be selfish. You'd think Americans, of all people, would take pride in that, and in precisely what that really means." -- Rick Gaber
"The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word 'selfishness' is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual 'package-deal,' which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind." -- Ayn Rand
"The right to the pursuit of happiness means man's right to live for himself, to choose what constitutes his own, private, personal happiness and to work for its achievement. Each individual is the sole and final judge in this choice. A man's happiness cannot be prescribed to him by another man or by any number of other men. ... These rights are the unconditional, personal, private, individual possession of every man, granted to him by the fact of his birth and requiring no other sanction. Such was the conception of the founders of our country, who placed individual rights above any and all collective claims." -- Ayn Rand
"America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes." -- Ayn Rand
"The idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others." -- Ayn Rand
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." -- Ayn Rand
"If men want to oppose war, it is statism that they must oppose. So long as they hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) alleged 'good' can justify it -- there can be no peace within a nation and no peace among nations." -- Ayn Rand, The Roots of War
"Racism, as a set of beliefs based upon the arbitrary assertion that the content of one's mind and one's character are inherited and unchangeable, is something I can demonstrate to be complete and total bullspit just from my own personal experience. You see, I disagree with more than half the teachings of my own parents, and probably 90% of my other ancesters. And I'm a cheerful, friendly optimist, while the vast majority of them have been cynical, suspicious pessimists. The only people who can consistently claim racism could be valid are those people who agree with and act like their parents and ancestors 100% of the time, have accepted everything they believe on blind faith, and have done absolutely no thinking, let alone corroborating, of their own. Who in their right minds would ever want to take seriously whatever such a pathetic creature has to say anyway?" -- Rick Gaber
"The three values which men held for centuries and which have now collapsed are: mysticism, collectivism, altruism. Mysticism -- as a cultural power -- died at the time of the Renaissance. Collectivism -- as a political ideal -- died in World War II. As to altruism -- it has never been alive. It is the poison of death in the blood of Western civilization, and men survived it only to the extent to which they neither believed nor practiced it. ..." -- Ayn Rand
"[Altruism] is a moral system which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the sole justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, value and virtue. This is the moral base of collectivism, of all dictatorships." -- Ayn Rand
"Collectivism, as an intellectual power and a moral ideal, is dead. But freedom and individualism, and their political expression, capitalism, have not yet been discovered." -- Ayn Rand
"It is not as late as you think. It is merely early -- in the age of the rebirth of individualism." -- Ayn Rand
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