Before I met Ayn Rand, I was a logical positivist, and accordingly, I didn't believe in absolutes, moral or otherwise. If I couldn't prove a proposition with facts and figures, it was without merit.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.
I am certainly not an intellectual relativist, nor a moral relativist.
No one is served or benefitted by believing in false or faulty ideas.
When I was younger, I was drawn to Ayn Rand books and other works of fiction celebrating individualism.
If somebody is going to try to paste a person's view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don't give me Ayn Rand.
I proved to myself that if I believe in something and set my mind to it I could actually accomplish it.
The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand. The fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.
One column of truth cannot hold an institution of ideas from falling into ignorance. It is wiser that a person of prudence and purpose save his strength for battles that can be won.
I tend to really be partial to Ayn Rand, and to The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
Ayn Rand is a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read.