Ayn Rand Quotes

Did it ever occur to you, that there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires - if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical?

If wars can be started by lies, they can be stopped by truth.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

War is death. If we are to engage in war, then we should have to stare it straight in the face and call it by its rightful name.

Only the dead have seen the end of the war.

The first casualty when war comes is truth.

As a writer, I am an intellectual. I believe in the ideals of the Enlightenment, I believe in the written word, in dialogue and in truth. I hate lies more than anything else. Most of the time I react by writing.

The real peril of war lies not in military defeat. It lies in war itself, whether we win or lose.

What is negotiation but the accumulation of small lies leading to advantage?

Lies that do not hurt, which are different from lies that protect oneself or hurt another person. That is not my business. But the truth is mostly very boring, and you can help it along with lies. There is no harm in that.

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.

When I recall my own path of life I cannot but speak of the violence, hatred and lies. A lesson drawn from such experiences, however, was that we can effectively oppose violence only if we ourselves do not resort to it.

The havoc wrought by war, which one compares with the havoc wrought by nature, is not an unavoidable fate before which man stands helpless. The natural forces that are the cause of war are human passions, which it lies in our power to change. What are culture and civilization if not the taming of blind forces within us as well as in nature?

How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.

A war, with its attendant human suffering, must, when that evil is unavoidable, be made to fragment more than buildings: It must shatter the foundations of thought and re-create. Only in this way does every individual share in the cataclysm and understand the purpose of sacrifice.

Not every time there's a disagreement is somebody lying.

A news-writer is a man without virtue who lies at home for his own profit.

An untruth must be spoken, where need requires. For whether men lie, or say true, it is with one and the same object. Men lie, because they think to gain by deceiving others; and speak the truth, because they expect to get something by their true speaking, and to be trusted afterwards in more important matters. Thus, though their conduct is so opposite, the end of both is alike. If there were no gain to be got, your true-speaking man would tell untruths as much as your liar, and your liar would tell the truth as much as your true-speaking man.

Wars: You know how you start, but you never know how you end.

War is about strategic agendas and epic battles that define nations and shape history. War is about courage and heroism, but it is also about pain and suffering and sorrow and tragedy

Truth stood on one side and Ease on the other; it has often been so.

It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interest of the country.

We are going to use the truth, and we are going to use it toward the end of winning the war; and we know what would happen to the American people if we lose it.

War is utter damn nonsense, a vast cancer fed by lies and self seeking malignity on the part of those who don't do the fighting.