I Am A Woman of The Mind - I Pronounce The Word 'No'

 "When you failed to give recognition to man's mind 

and attempted to rule human beings by force 

those who submitted had no mind to surrender; 

those who had, were men who don't submit."

~ Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, page 971

"I do not surrender my reason or deal with men who surrender theirs. I have nothing to gain from fools or cowards; I have no benefits to seek from human vices: from stupidity, dishonesty, fear. The only value men can offer me is the work of their mind. When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn, if I am wrong, I will; one will win, but both will profit." - 936

"I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win - and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was 'No.'" - 960

"What blank-out permitted you to hope that you could get away with this muck of contradictions and to plan it as an ideal society, when the 'No' of your victims was sufficient to demolish the whole of your structure?" - 961

"Morality, to you, is a phantom scarecrow made of duty, of boredom, of punishment, of pain, a cross-breed between the first school-teacher of your past and the tax collector of your present, a scarecrow standing in a barren field, waving a stick to chase away your pleasures - and pleasure, to you, is a liquor-soggy brain, a mind-less slut, the stupor of a moron who stakes his cash on some animals' race, since pleasure cannot be moral." - 964-965

~ Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, VII "This is John Galt Speaking"