He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival, the cats who teach their kittens to hunt, the birds who spend such strident efforts on teaching their fledglings to fly - yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child's education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think ... Men would shudder, he thought, if they saw a mother bird plucking the feathers from the wings of her young, then pushing him out of the nest to struggle for survival - yet that was what they did to their children.
More Quotes from Ayn Rand:
If a life could have a theme song and I believe every worthwhile one has mine is a religion, an obsession, a mania or all of these expressed in one word individualism. I was born with that obsession, and I've never seen and do not know now a cause more worthy, more misunderstood, more seemingly hopeless and tragically needed.Ayn Rand
A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.
Ayn Rand
The only proper purpose of a government is to protect mans rights, which means to protect him from physical violence.... The only proper functions of a government are the police, to protect you from criminals the army, to protect you from foreign invaders and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, and to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.
Ayn Rand
Whatever road I take, the guiding star is within me the guiding star and the loadstone which point the way. They point in but one direction. They point to me.
Ayn Rand
All your life, you have heard yourself denounced not for your faults, but for your greatest virtues. You have been hated, not for your mistakes, but for your achievements. You have been scorned for all those qualities of character which are your highest.
Ayn Rand
She looked at the crowd and she felt, simultaneously, astonishment that they should stare at her, when this event was so personally her own that no communication about it was possible, and a sense of fitness that they should be here, that they should want to see it, because the sight of an achievement was the greatest gift a human being could offer to others.
Ayn Rand
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Based on Topics: Art Quotes, Birds Quotes, Brain Quotes, Cats Quotes, Children Quotes, Education Quotes, Good & Evil Quotes, Man Quotes, Mind Quotes, Mothers Quotes, Purposes Quotes, Teaching Quotes, Thought & Thinking Quotes, Youth QuotesBased on Keywords: fledglings, plucking, strident
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