VALKYRIE ARMS, LTD

"The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave."

"Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."

"Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values."

-- "Atlas Shrugged"

"Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."

-- "The Moratorium on Brains"

"...a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along and who would precipitate it into the chaos of gang warfare."

-- "The Nature of Government," The Virtue of Selfishness

"If it were true that a heavy concentration of industry is destructive to human life, one would find life expectancy declining in the more advanced countries. But it has been rising steadily. Here are the figures on life expectancy in the United States:
1900 - 47.3 years
1920 - 53 years
1940 - 60 years
1968 - 70.2 years (the latest figures compiled [as of January 1971])
Anyone over 30 years of age today, give a silent "Thank you" to the nearest, grimiest, sootiest smokestacks you can find."

-- "The Anti-Industrial Revolution," The New Left: the Anti-Industrial Revolution

"Even *if* smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death."

-- "The Anti-Industrial Revolution," The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution

"If physical force is to be barred from social relationships, men need an institution charged with the task of protecting their rights under an objective code of rules. This is the task of a government - of a proper government - its basic task, its only moral justification and the reason why men do need a government. A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control - i.e., under objectively defined laws."

-- Ayn Rand, "The Nature of Government." The Virtue of Selfishness.

"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may only resort to force only against those who start the use of force."

-- Galt's Speech, "Atlas Shrugged"

"Since time immemorial and pre-industrial, 'greed' has been the accusation hurled at the rich by the concrete-bound illiterates who were unable to conceive of the source of wealth or of the motivation of those who produce it."

-- Philosophical Detection, "Philosophy: Who Needs It"

"No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as the right to enslave."

-- "Man's Rights," The Virtue of Selfishness

"The end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others."

-- "The Cashing-In: The Student Rebellion," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

"Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries."

-- "For The New Intellectual"

"Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others - misfortune is not a mortgage on achievement - failure is not a mortgage on success - suffering is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence - man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone's altar nor for anyone's cause - life is not one huge hospital."

-- "Apollo 11," The Objectivist

"Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive by any random means, as a parasite, a moocher or a looter, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment - so he is free to seek his happiness in any irrational fraud, any whim, any delusion, any mindless escape from reality, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment nor to escape the consequences."

-- "The Objectivist Ethics," The Virtue Of Selfishness

"Do not make the mistake...of thinking that a worker is a slave and that he holds his job by his employer's permission. He does not hold it by permission - but by contract, that is, by a voluntary mutual agreement. A worker can quit his job; a slave cannot."

-- "Textbook of Americanism"

"An individualist is a man who says: "I will not run anyone's life - nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule or be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone - nor sacrifice anyone to myself."

-- "Textbook of Americanism"

"Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people's savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments."

-- "Who Will Protect Us From Our Protectors"? The Objectivist Newsletter, May 1952

"You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles. Your only choice is whether these principles are true or false, whether they represent your conscious, rational convictions - or a grab-bag of notions snatched at random, whose sources, validity, context and consequences you do not know, notions which, more often that not, you would drop like a hot potato if you knew."

-- "Philosophy: Who Needs It,"

"When ‘the common good’ of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals."

-- "What is Capitalism?" Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

"Justice does exist in the world, whether people choose to practice it or not. The men of ability are being avenged. The avenger is reality. Its weapon is slow, silent, invisible, and men perceive it only by its consequences - by the gutted ruins and the moans of agony it leaves in its wake. The name of the weapon is: inflation."

-- "Egalitarianism And Inflation," Philosophy: Who Needs It

"Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law."

-- "Man's Rights," The Virtue of Selfishness

"The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value. Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice - which means: self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction - which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good."

-- "Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World," Philosophy: Who Needs It

"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 demand 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."

-- "America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business

"[On three of the rules governing the mechanics of compromise]
1. In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins.
2. In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins.
3. When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side."

-- "The Anatomy of Compromise," Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

"If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor."

"Any alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right."