Ayn Rand Quotes

Fascism is fascism. Terrorism is terrorism. Oppression is oppression.

Tyrants and dictators have incited hatred against ethnic and religious minorities for centuries in order to consolidate power for themselves.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

When a dictatorship controls the political life of a country, responsible opposition cannot develop, and dissent is driven underground and toward the extreme. And to draw attention away from their social and economic failures, dictators place blame on other countries and other races, and stir the hatred that leads to violence. This status quo of despotism and anger cannot be ignored or appeased, kept in a box or bought off.

Enemy of the People

Dictators always look good until the last ten minutes.

The worst and most dangerous form of absolutist rule is that of an intolerant majority.

A dictatorship breeds distrust.

Dictatorships start wars because they need external enemies to exert internal control over their own people.

They have been talking about a dictatorship and they were right because there's a dictatorship and there's a government that has been fighting that dictatorship, the dictatorship of the media.

It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

When it comes to tyrants, dictators and terrorists, strength and the threat of force is the only language they understand.

A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.

Dictators are interesting, no?

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.

Nondemocratic regimes imperil the security of the world. They stay in power by controlling their populations. This control invariably requires an increasing amount of repression. To justify this repression and maintain internal stability, external enemies must be manufactured.

I conceived the most profound admiration for ...[Mussolini, who] ... would not deal with the internal enemies of Italy, but pushed their annihilation in every way and by all means.

One Hundred and Seventy Three Despots would surely be as oppressive as one.

The government assures the people that they are in danger from the invasion of another nation, or from foes in their midst, and that the only way to escape this danger is by the slavish obedience of the people to their government. This fact is seen most prominently during revolutions and dictatorships, but it exists always and everywhere that the power of the government exists.

An extreme reflection of the dangers confronting modern social development is the growth of racism, nationalism, and militarism and, in particular, the rise of demagogic, hypocritical, and monstrously cruel dictatorial police regimes…. These tragic developments have always derived from the struggle of egotistical and group interests, the struggle for unlimited power, suppression of intellectual freedom, a spread of intellectually simplified, narrow-minded mass myths.

In every Revolution a dictator is needed to save the state by force, or censors to save it by virtue.

I am not a dictator, and I do not think I will become one. I will not maintain power with a machine gun.

Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.

I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.