Atlas Shrugged Quote of the Week

“I’m after a man whom I want to destroy.  He died many centuries ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of men’s minds, we will not have a decent world to live in.”

“What man?”

“Robin Hood.”

“He was the man who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.  Well, I’m the man who robs from the poor and gives to the rich – or, to be exact, the man who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the productive rich.”

“This is the horror which Robin Hood immortalized as an ideal of righteousness.  It is said that he fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived.  He is remembered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor.  He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity.  He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does….Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive.” – Ragnar Danneskjold