Ayn Rand Quotes
Man's basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.
Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. Random House, 1957.
This failing of human nature occurs very frequently in politics. Global Warming was an example, There were many intelligent and skilled politicians who just would not accept the reality that man’s activities on Earth were having an effect on the climate. If they did accept that truth, then the implications would have been profound and much legislation would be required which would limit the freedom of people and companies to do many things. Industries would have to have additional regulations. Government spending would be needed to protect many cities by building up infrastructure. For the Liberal, none of these steps was a major problem. But to a Conservative, all the steps that would have to be taken, were anathema to his/her ideological beliefs. So it would take much more courage for a Conservative to accept the truth of Global Warming, than for a Liberal. Few Conservatives had that courage and there was a political schism over a scientific reality that neither Liberals or Conservatives could understand. The fact that 98 percent of all the scientists who deal with climate, explained that Global Warming was a reality, did not matter to the Conservatives. There are many examples where Liberals would not accept realistic truth for a long time, like the fact that Russia had become a totalitarian dictatorship. And then there have been many issues where virtually all the politicians would not accept truth. An example was the pre WWII rise of Hitler and Fascism. Most American politicians would not accept the fact that eventually we would have to war against Fascism, and there were almost no politicians who would support spending more taxpayer money to build up the military. It took Pearl Harbor and the German Declaration of War on America to make the politicians face reality.
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.
