# Quote — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

> "When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion—when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed."

- Author: [Ayn Rand](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand.md)
- Book: [Atlas Shrugged](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/atlas-shrugged.md)
- Page: 413
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged#Chapter_Two:_The_Aristocracy_of_Pull) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/atlas-shrugged/when-you-see

## 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)