# Quote — Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness

> Ask yourself why totalitarian dictatorships find it necessary to pour money and effort into propaganda for their own helpless, chained, gagged slaves, who have no means of protest or defense. The answer is that even the humblest peasant or the lowest savage would rise in blind rebellion, were he to realize that he is being immolated, not to some incomprehensible noble purpose, but to plain, naked human evil.

- Author: [Ayn Rand](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand.md)
- Book: [The Virtue of Selfishness](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/the-virtue-of-selfishness.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand#The_Virtue_of_Selfishness_(1964)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/the-virtue-of-selfishness/ask-yourself-why

## More from this book

> When a man declares: "There are no blacks and whites [in morality]" he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: "I am unwilling to be wholly good—and please don't regard me as wholly evil!"

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/the-virtue-of-selfishness/when-a-man.md)

> Observe, in politics, that the term extremism has become a synonym of "evil," regardless of the content of the issue (the evil is not what you are extreme about, but that you are "extreme"—i.e., consistent).

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/the-virtue-of-selfishness/observe-in-politics.md)

> The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/the-virtue-of-selfishness/the-moral-cannibalism.md)