# Quote — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

> "Only a ghost can exist without material property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his effort. The doctrine that 'human rights' are superior to 'property rights' simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others; since the competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent to own their betters and to use them as productive cattle."

- Author: [Ayn Rand](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand.md)
- Book: [Atlas Shrugged](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/atlas-shrugged.md)
- Page: 1062
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged#Chapter_Seven:_%22This_is_John_Galt_Speaking%22) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/atlas-shrugged/only-a-ghost

## More from this book

> "Get the hell out of my way!"

p. 1125 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/atlas-shrugged/get-the-hell.md)

> "Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them."

p. 1092 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/atlas-shrugged/never-think-of-pain.md)

> "People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked. And if one gains the immediate purpose of the lie - the price one pays is the destruction of what the gain was intended to serve. The man who lies to the world is the world's slave from then on."

p. 859 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/atlas-shrugged/people-think-that.md)