“Man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child’s education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think.”

Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist and philosopher of the 20th century. She is best known for her novels *The Fountainhead* and *Atlas Shrugged*, which explore themes of individualism, capitalism, and rational egoism. Her ideas significantly influenced libertarian and objectivist thought.