"Evil requires the sanction of the victim"
About this Quote
Rand’s line is a moral provocation dressed as a diagnosis. “Evil” here isn’t a supernatural force; it’s bureaucratic, social, parasitic. The real target is the gray, everyday bargain where people comply because it’s easier than resisting, safer than speaking, more comfortable than refusing. By calling that compliance “sanction,” she flips the usual script: the victim isn’t only harmed, they’re recruited.
The sentence works because it smuggles an entire worldview into seven words. Rand’s Objectivism treats autonomy as the central human fact, so oppression becomes not just a crime but a kind of confidence trick. Tyrants, con artists, manipulators: they don’t merely seize power; they fish for permission slips - guilt, duty, fear of conflict, the desire to be seen as “good.” The subtext is that evil can’t stand on its own; it needs your moral language to launder its demands.
Context matters. Writing in the shadow of totalitarianism and amid Cold War arguments about collectivism, Rand aims this at systems that claim virtue while extracting obedience. It’s also a rebuke to the culture of self-sacrifice she thought made people pliable. That’s why the line is both bracing and controversial: it grants the individual agency even in grim circumstances, but it can curdle into blame if taken as a universal rule. As rhetoric, it’s a scalpel: meant to cut through pieties that keep people cooperating with their own diminishment.
The sentence works because it smuggles an entire worldview into seven words. Rand’s Objectivism treats autonomy as the central human fact, so oppression becomes not just a crime but a kind of confidence trick. Tyrants, con artists, manipulators: they don’t merely seize power; they fish for permission slips - guilt, duty, fear of conflict, the desire to be seen as “good.” The subtext is that evil can’t stand on its own; it needs your moral language to launder its demands.
Context matters. Writing in the shadow of totalitarianism and amid Cold War arguments about collectivism, Rand aims this at systems that claim virtue while extracting obedience. It’s also a rebuke to the culture of self-sacrifice she thought made people pliable. That’s why the line is both bracing and controversial: it grants the individual agency even in grim circumstances, but it can curdle into blame if taken as a universal rule. As rhetoric, it’s a scalpel: meant to cut through pieties that keep people cooperating with their own diminishment.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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