There are various degrees of flawdom (if that’s a word). I’ve read a lot on Ayn Rand and her life was pretty sad. She was very bitter towards the end. It didn’t turn out the paradise she thought it would. She had no God (except self). She didn’t believe in pity, charity or empathy. She was self indulgent to the extreme. She believed more in lust than love. She was unabashedly unfaithful. Marriage was a vehicle and if it didn’t take you to your destination then it’s time to trade it in one that does. She could be spiteful and vengeful. But other than that, I’m sure she was a wonderful person.
Ayn Rand was an awful person—but stunningly brilliant in many ways.
She has some quotes are terrifying prophetic—way ahead of her time. Some of these sounds like commentaries written today. Here are a few:
“It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings.
Where there’s service, there is someone being served.
The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.”
“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
“Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”
“The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.”
“I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
“There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.”
“I’ve read a lot on Ayn Rand and her life was pretty sad...”
Not a lot has changed either.