# Quote — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

> "Who is the public? What does it hold as its good? There was a time when men believed that 'the good' was a concept to be defined by a code of moral values and that no man had the right to seek his good through the violation of the rights of another. If it is now believed that my fellow men may sacrifice me in any manner they please for the sake of whatever they believe to be their own good, if they believe that they may seize my property simply because they need it—well, so does any burglar. There is only this difference: the burglar does not ask me to sanction his act."

- Author: [Ayn Rand](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand.md)
- Book: [Atlas Shrugged](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/atlas-shrugged.md)
- Page: 477
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged#Chapter_Four:_The_Sanction_of_the_Victim) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/atlas-shrugged/who-is-the

## 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)