post your favorite ayn rand quotes or stories

Rand made Branden her 'intellectual heir' and chief spokesperson; he refined her Objectivist ideas into a strict philosophical system and founded an institute bearing his own name. The affair ended in 1968 when Branden took up with another disciple. He later became a Beverly Hills psychotherapist.

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles2/ChambersAynRand.shtml

RAND: This type of man is reversing cause and effect in regard to sex. Sex is an expression of a man's self-esteem, of his own self-value. But the man who does not value himself tries to reverse this process. He tries to derive his self-esteem from his sexual conquests, which cannot be done. He cannot acquire his own value from the number of women who regard him as valuable. Yet that is the hopeless thing which he attempts.

RICCI: The Fountainhead because the writing is so beautiful.

MOVIELINE: What about The Catcher in the Rye?

RICCI: I hate The Catcher in the Rye. It's so whiny and incredibly self-involved. The fact that it was supposed to represent what we were going through in our teen years - I was just like, fuck you. I can take responsibility for my emotions and actions.

MOVIELINE: If you could have three wishes connected to the movies, what would they be?

RICCI: I'd want to remake The Fountainhead. I'd like to run a studio. I want to have the capacity and ability to make films - I don't have it right now.

Q: Would you say you have a large ego? A: Yes.

For make no mistake: this is a big book. And nothing could demonstrate more clearly that Objectivists' reputation for humorless, prickly dogmatism is undeserved.

The humor included here ranges from brief riddles ("Q: Why won't Leonard Peikoff wear a digital watch? A: Because he's a second-hander.") to a longer, Mad Magazine-style parody in which Alissa Rosenbaum publishes an advice column under the pen name "Ayn Randers." (Sample entry: "Dear Ayn Randers: Help! I've lost my car keys! My wife says they're somewhere in our house, but my son says they're not. What should I do? Sign me: Keyless in Milwaukee. Dear Keyless: Check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.")

Most of the jokes here will be funny only to insiders, but there's no doubt that they hit the marks they aim at. The following riddle, for example, is offered in two variants, one "orthodox/Peikovian" and one "heterodox/Kelleyite."

First the "ARI" version:

Q: What's two plus two?
A: Whatever Ayn Rand said it was.

Immediately followed by the "TOC" version:

Q: What's two plus two?
A: Ayn Rand said it was "four," but she never followed up on her own groundbreaking insight. Now, thanks to the work of David Kelley, we're finally able to verify her result independently and give it the attention it deserves.

Q: Why was Ayn Rand so upset when Nathaniel Branden ended their affair?
A: Because he wasn't being Frank with her.

The majority of the rest are, unfortunately, unprintable here.

That would be one very hungry little piranha.

At times like this I love Tuomas and all of Finland

-- Ayn Rand, "America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

m.

Happy condescending!

I like that the Ayn Rand Institute must compete with the RAND Institute (short for Research and Development). Google knows the winner.

This is soooo U&K!!!

Suggestions:
- Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
- Try different keywords.
- Try more general keywords.

In the States, yes.

My friend Lizzy considered writing an essay for the Ayn Rand Institute after finding out about it.

I won $30! I think they missed the fact that I thought Anthem fucking sucked.

Have you ever heard of the republican party? It's this group of people in the u.s. that takes her seriously.

ask and ye shall recieve:
http://www.angelfire.com/goth/randismygod/OBJECTIVISTFANFICTION.HTML

Hahaha! Oh my God.

yes - by folks like ALAN GREENSPAN.

-- nabisco (--...), October 22nd, 2004.

Which is why the Republican party is socialist compared to Rand. You can say a lot of bad things about the Republican party but you can't have it both be a far-right fascist party and a far-right libertarian party when the two beliefs are as much opposite as liberal and conservative.

On my way to work (Scott: this is the 26-->39 bus if you're keeping notes), I was sitting in the back of the bus. Sitting near me also were:

* a very dressed up young urban professional woman reading Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead
* a disgruntled dishoveled large bald man

These two start to interact:

MAN: Great book you're reading.
WOMAN: Why, thank you!
MAN: What inspired you to buy it?
WOMAN: Well, I was talking to some friends at work, and they recommended the book to me, so I went to a bookstore, read it through, it looked interesting, and NOW I can't stop reading it! It's fascinating!
MAN: (pauses) Yeah, it is interesting, I'll give it that! (smiles)
WOMAN: (smiles back)
...
WOMAN: Ah, that's my stop!
MAN: You have a good day, madam
WOMAN: Why, thank you very much. (smiles)
WOMAN: *gets off bus*
MAN: *turns to me*
MAN: WORST FUCKIN BOOK EVER WRITTEN!
MAN: ...
MAN: But SHEEEE was FI-I-I-NE!

Q: How do you pronounce Ayn Rand's name?

A: With a derisive snort.

Sure you can. It's a big right wing tent.

from Ayn Rand's "America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business."

but what if you had won?!?

-- latebloomer: You may order a puppet similar to this one (posercore24...), July 29th, 2005.

i think this still stands

Maybe Angelina Jolie will fulfill latebloomer's fantasy.

god i hope so

http://mcsweeneys.net/2008/11/20tucker.html

ATLAS
SHRUGGED
UPDATED FOR
THE CURRENT
FINANCIAL
CRISIS.
BY JEREMIAH TUCKER

- - - -

1.

"Damn it, Dagny! I need the government to get out of the way and let me do my job!"

She sat across the desk from him. She appeared casual but confident, a slim body with rounded shoulders like an exquisitely engineered truss. How he hated his debased need for her, he who loathed self-sacrifice but would give up everything he valued to get in her pants ... Did she know?

"I heard the thugs in Washington were trying to take your Rearden metal at the point of a gun," she said. "Don't let them, Hank. With your advanced alloy and my high-tech railroad, we'll revitalize our country's failing infrastructure and make big, virtuous profits."

"Oh, no, I got out of that suckers' game. I now run my own hedge-fund firm, Rearden Capital Management."

"What?"

He stood and adjusted his suit jacket so that his body didn't betray his shameful weakness. He walked toward her and sat informally on the edge of her desk. "Why make a product when you can make dollars? Right this second, I'm earning millions in interest off money I don't even have."

He gestured to his floor-to-ceiling windows, a symbol of his productive ability and goodness.

"There's a whole world out there of byzantine financial products just waiting to be invented, Dagny. Let the leeches run my factories into the ground! I hope they do! I've taken out more insurance on a single Rearden Steel bond than the entire company is even worth! When my old company finally tanks, I'll make a cool $877 million."

Their eyes locked with an intensity she was only beginning to understand. Yes, Hank ... claim me ... If we're to win the battle against the leeches, we must get it on ... right now ... Don't let them torture us for our happiness ... or our billions.

He tore his eyes away.

"I can't. Sex is base and vile!"

"No, it's an expression of our highest values and our admiration for each other's minds."

"Your mind gives me the biggest boner, Dagny Taggart."

He fell upon her like a savage, wielding his mouth like a machete, and in the pleasure she took from him her body became an extension of her quarterly earnings report—proof of her worthiness as a lover. His hard-on was sanction enough.

"Scream your secret passions, Hank Rearden!"

"Derivatives!"

"Yes!"

"Credit-default swaps!"

"Oh, yes! Yes!"

"Collateralized debt obligation."

"YES! YES! YES!"

2.

Dagny and Hank searched through the ruins of the 21st Century Investment Bank. As they stepped through the crumbling cubicles, a trampled legal pad with a complex column of computations captured Dagny's attention. She fell to her hands and knees and raced through the pages and pages of complex math written in a steady hand. Her fingers bled from the paper cuts, and she did not care.

"What is it, Dagny?"

"Read this."

"Good God!"

"Yes, it's an experimental formula for a financial strategy that could convert static securities into kinetic profits that would increase at an almost exponential rate."

Hank studied the numbers. "The amount of debt you would need to make this work would be at least 30-to-1, but a daring, rational man who lives by his mind would be willing to take that risk!"

"Yes, and it's so complex the government could never regulate it."

"It's perfect. There's only one problem—half the pages are missing. Could you reconstruct it, Dagny?"

Her answer escaped her lips like air from a punctured galvanized-steel duct:

"No."

"I didn't think so, but why leave such an achievement to rot here? It's the greatest thing I've ever laid eyes on, made by a monumental genius, the sort of mind that's only born once in a century ... Dagny, why are you fondling your breasts?"

3.

There was still the breathless tone in her voice when she asked, "The financial strategy ... the financial strategy I found ... it was you who made it?"

"Yes," he said.

John Galt's face betrayed no signs of pain or fear or guilt, and his body had the clean tensile strength of a foundry casting with skin the color of a polished full-port brass valve. In the center of this secret mountain valley where the titans of Wall Street had retreated for an extended junket was a 3-foot-tall dollar sign of pure gold atop a granite column. It was tacky, yes, but it was also their emblem, a symbol of their triumph.

"But why did you leave it behind?"

"Because once I committed the plan to memory I no longer needed it."

"I don't understand."

"The capital-gains tax, Dagny," Galt said. "We loathe it."

He pointed to the houses of men she knew, and the names sounded like the richest stock market in the world—a roll call of honor.

"Our money represents our spirit's values," Galt said. "When the government takes our profits, it is literally robbing us of our souls. I will not apologize for my wealth to a nation of looters. We who live by the mind could've been engineers, scientists, doctors, extreme-sports enthusiasts, but there is no purer pursuit than the pursuit of money. A is A. Money begets more money, and ..."

Galt went on like this for what seemed to Dagny like hours, until, finally, something he said piqued her interest.

"And that's why I created the financial plan you found. It's true, it works. But it is not sustainable. It will ruin this country's financial system, and then we'll see how those who despise us prosper when their lenders and investors refuse to invest or lend." He laughed joylessly. "Funny, isn't it? I must destroy the very thing I love in order to save it."

"Just to avoid paying taxes?"

"I do not compromise my beliefs, and I will kill anyone who asks me to!"

A silence fell between them, and it was awkward.

Finally, Dagny asked, "So, just out of curiosity, how much are you worth?"

He shrugged. "What is infinity?"

She let out a rich, powerful moan, like the sound of a passing diesel train in the night.

does a latebloomer read mcsweeneys?

no, i just saw that linked somewhere

The terrible writing and terrible philosophy are somewhat of a piece with one another. It's often noted how her philosophy was very much an exaggerated reaction against Communist thought; I wonder sometimes whether her writing style was in any way an exaggerated reaction against Russia's tradition of producing decent literature.

-- nabisco (--...), October 22nd, 2004.

lol

At an Objectivist lecture in the 1960s, someone asked if such heroes as Rand portrayed could exist in the real world. Yes, she replied, there were two in the room at that moment: She indicated Nathaniel Branden and herself.

There is a special reason why you, the future leaders of the United States Army, need to be philosophically armed today. You are the target of a special attack by the Kantian-Hegelian-collectivist establishment that dominates our cultural institutions at present. You are the army of the last semi-free country left on earth, yet you are accused of being a tool of imperialism--and "imperialism" is the name given to the foreign policy of this country, which has never engaged in military conquest and has never profited from the two world wars, which she did not initiate, but entered and won. (It was, incidentally, a foolishly overgenerous policy, which made this country waste her wealth on helping both her allies and her former enemies.) Something called "the military-industrial complex"--which is a myth or worse--is being blamed for all of this country's troubles. Bloody college hoodlums scream demands that R.O.T.C. units be banned from college campuses. Our defense budget is being attacked, denounced and undercut by people who claim that financial priority should be given to ecological rose gardens and to classes in esthetic self-expression for the residents of the slums.

this is fucking incredible

http://gos.sbc.edu/r/rand.html

The motive of the destroyers is not love for communism, but hatred for America. Why hatred? Because America is the living refutation of a Kantian universe.

YESSSS

a living refutation of a Kantian universe is totally a place I'd like to raise some kids

guess it's obvious who this chick Kant stand

(It was, incidentally, a foolishly overgenerous policy, which made this country waste her wealth on helping both her allies and her former enemies.)

lol @ Ayn Rand shitting on the Marshall Plan ... which was about as rationally self-interested as any US government spending program ever.

vs yr irrationally bolded display name

Libertarian ‘Utopia’ Styled After Ayn Rand Book Spectacularly Falls Apart Almost Immediately

Chile must love being ground zero for every experiment in delusional American economics.

I loved this quote:

Jeff Berwick, who happens to run The Dollar Vigilante website, has called Johnson [founder of the community] a sociopath and a fraud.

Hmmmm. Sociopath and a fraud, eh. What connection could those traits possibly have with an ideal libertarian society?

whole thing is lol

I think I saw this linked somewhere else too but can't remember where

yeah i saw that a while back and was p well boggled

why would you need some white american libertarian intermediary, and why would that even be good, by your own standards? if you want to live in a chilean subdivision, go buy a house in one.

Funniest thing I learned all day: Ayn Rand received federal arts subsidies for her play under FDR’s New Deal Federal Theatre Project. Absolutely fantastic. pic.twitter.com/Te7aLRTRYD

— David Slavick (@davidslavick) August 27, 2019