Ayn Rand Quotes
Do not keep silent when your own ideas and values are being attacked. If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the default of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell.
Ayn Rand, 1905-1982, Writer & Philosopher, Philosophy: Who Needs It
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The President was reacting to a chain of vents whereby Sony Entertainment produced a satiric movie which offended the leadership of North Korea who condemned, threatened and may have launched a cyberattack on Sony. That company reacted by withdrawing the movie and the President thought that was a mistake despite the fact that there were threats against theaters showing the movie and people attending the showings.
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He was countering the argument of unlimited free speech advocates that fascist hate speech should not be countered by more speech on teh other side. Historically, he observed, that Fascism has only been defeated by force and control.
This paraphrased quote originated with Martin Luther King, Jr. See related quote.
In November of each year protesters gather at Fort Benning, the site of the U. S. Army School of the Americas. The School provides training for Latin American Military Officers in Counter-Insurgency Training. The graduates of the school have included some of the worst Latin American killers and torturers (See {41061} for example) who rose to positions of power in their lands. It has also included many leaders who did not ever resort to war crimes and atrocities and also became leaders of their countries. It has been an institution of great controversy since it was discovered that the school at one point taught methods of interrogating insurgents that were tantamount to torture. Defenders of the school claim that but for the school, the military atrocities would have been worse and that it contributed to more human and democratic governments in the Americas. The annual protest has attracted more than 16,000 protesters, some of whom—like Bourgeois—have been guilty of trespass and interfering with a government facility and have served jail terms for those violations.
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American writer and philosopher. She is known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. She had a play produced on Broadway in 1935 and 1936. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead. In 1957, Rand published her best-known work, the novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own periodicals and releasing several collections of essays until her death in 1982.
