Ayn Rand — "The worst sin is to be selfless."
The worst sin is to be selfless.
The worst sin is to be selfless.
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
"The only good is the good of the individual."
"The state is a tool of the exploiters."
"The moral justification of capitalism is man's right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself."
"To be happy, one must be oneself."
"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe."
Russian-American novelist (The Fountainhead, 1943; Atlas Shrugged, 1957) and Objectivist philosopher whose ethical egoism and capitalism-as-virtue shaped American libertarianism. Closely associated with Nathaniel Branden (her early Objectivist-movement collaborator and lover). For an intellectual contrast, see John Rawls, Harvard political philosopher (1921-2002) — Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971) systematized exactly the egalitarian-redistributive liberalism Rand's Atlas Shrugged was structured to attack. Rand's 'sanction of the victim' and Rawls's 'veil of ignorance' are the two opposite founding intuitions of American political philosophy — selfish-flourishing-as-virtue vs fairness-from-original-position.
Your cart is empty