Rand, Ayn(orig. Alissa Rosenbaum, also Alice Rosenbaum)

US (Russian-born) author and philosopher

immigrated to US 1926 (naturalized US citizen 1931)

advocate of capitalism, individualism, and enlightened self-interest

wrote play "The Night of January 16th" 1935, novels "We the Living" 1936, "The Fountainhead" 1943, "Atlas Shrugged" 1957, novelette "Anthem" 1938

leader of Objectivist school

• "I consider promiscuity immoral. Not because sex is evil, but because sex is too good and too important."
• "An emotion as much tells you nothing about reality, beyond the fact that something makes you feel something."
• "The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive - a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society - a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself.... The purpose of man's life, say both, is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question."
• "Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism?"
• "The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt."