"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American writer and philosopher best known for The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. She developed the philosophical system she called Objectivism and became an influential figure in 20th-century political and intellectual debate.