"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money — and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being — the self-made man — the American industrialist.
If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose — because it contains all the others — the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity — to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favour. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created."~ Ayn Rand from her 1953 essay '“The Meaning of Money” collected in her book For the New Intellectual
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"The truth is that across all the pages of history there have been two fundamental antagonists who have been variously venerated and eviscerated: the trader, and the warrior -- the former the bringer of peace, the latter the bringer of violence. The man of peace, and the man of war. The man who relies on voluntary exchange to mutual advantage, and the man who loots and plunders. The man who produces value, and the man who destroys it. The bringer of peace and prosperity, and all the benighted horsemen of the apocalypse."=> The three horsemen of non-apocalypse - NOT PC, 2010
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