“You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the efforts of men who are better than you.”
— Ludwig Von Mises to Ayn Rand
Hi Lila,
I seemed to recall this quote also. Is it in one of the Rand biographies?
It’s actually from one of the letters (below), but I think I might have seen it as one of the revolving headers at The Daily Bell…or on some other libertarian website somewhere
MISES AND ROTHBARD LETTERS TO AYN RAND
January 23, 1958
Mrs. Ayn Rand
36 East 36 Street
New York, N.Y.
Dear Mrs. Rand:
I AM NOT A professional critic and I feel no call to judge the merits of
a novel. So I do not want to detain you with the information that I
enjoyed very much reading Atlas Shrugged and that I am full of admiration
for your masterful construction of the plot.
But “Atlas Shrugged” is not merely a novel. It is also—or may I
say: first of all—a cogent analysis of the evils that plague our society,
a substantiated rejection of the ideology of our self-styled “intellectuals”
and a pitiless unmasking of the insincerity of the policies
adopted by governments and political parties. It is a devastating
exposure of the “moral cannibals,” the “gigolos of science” and of
the “academic prattle” of the makers of the “anti-industrial revolution.”
You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told
them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions
which you simply take for granted you owe to the effort of men who
are better than you.
If this be arrogance, as some of your critics observed, it still is the
truth that had to be said in this age of the Welfare State.
I warmly congratulate you and I am looking forward with great
expectations to your future work.
Sincerely,
Ludwig Mises
LM/ms
JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES
VOLUME 21, NO. 4 (WINTER 2007): 11–16