Self-Esteem
"No value is higher than self-esteem, but you've invested it in counterfeit securities - and now your morality has caught you in a trap where you are forced to protect your self-esteem by fighting for the creed of self-destruction. The grim joke is on you: that need of self-esteem, which you're unable to explain or to define, belongs to my morality, not yours; it's the objective token of my code, it is my proof within your own soul.
Self-esteem is reliance on one's power to think. It cannot be replaced by one's power to deceive.
The man of authentic self-confidence is the man who relies on the judgment of his own mind. Such a man is not malleable; he may by mistaken, he may be fooled in a given instance, but he is inflexible in regard to the absolutism of reality, i.e., in seeking and demanding the truth . . .
The attack on "selfishness: is an attack on man's self-esteem; to surrender one, is to surrender the other. . . ."
~ Ayn Rand Lexicon - Self-Esteem
Crime
"All actions defined as criminal in a free society are actions involving force - and only such actions are answered by force.
Do not be misled by sloppy expressions such as "A murderer commits a crime against society." It is not society that a murderer murders, but an individual man. It is not a social right that he breaks, but an individual right. He is not punished for hurting a collective - he has not hurt a whole collective - he has hurt one man. If a criminal robs ten men - it is still not "society" that he has robbed, but ten individuals. There are no "crimes against society" - all crimes are committed against specific men, against individuals. And it is precisely the duty of a proper social system and of a proper government to protect an individual against criminal attack - against force. . . . "
~ Ayn Rand Lexicon - Crime
