“To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.”

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.