She did not say that. You are misrepresenting again.

Ayn Rand:

"The title of this book may evoke the kind of question that I hear once in a while: 'Why do you use the word 'selfishness' to denote virtuous qualities of character, when that word antagonizes so many people to whom it does not mean the things you mean?'

"To those who ask it, my answer is: 'For the reason that makes you afraid of it.'

"But there are others, who would not ask that question, sensing the moral cowardice it implies, yet who are unable to formulate my actual reason or to identify the profound moral issue involved. It is to them that I will give a more explicit answer.

"It is not a mere semantic issue nor a matter of arbitrary choice. The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word 'selfishness' is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual 'package-deal,' which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.

"In popular usage, the word 'selfishness' is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.

"Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word 'selfishness' is: concern with one's own interests.

"This concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one's own interests is good or evil; nor does it tell us what constitutes man's actual interests. It is the task of ethics to answer such questions.

"The ethics of altruism has created the image of the brute, as its answer, in order to make men accept two inhuman tenets: (a) that any concern with one's own interests is evil, regardless of what these interests might be, and (b) that the brute's activities are in fact to one's own interest (which altruism enjoins man to renounce for the sake of his neighbors).
...

"Yet that is the meaning of altruism, implicit in such examples as the equation of an industrialist with a robber. There is a fundamental moral difference between a man who sees his self-interest in production and a man who sees it in robbery. The evil of a robber does not lie in the fact that he pursues his own interests, but in what he regards as to his own interest; not in the fact that he pursues his values, but in what he chose to value; not in the fact that he wants to live, but in the fact that he wants to live on a subhuman level (see 'The Objectivist Ethics')
.
"If it is true that what I mean by 'selfishness' is not what is meant conventionally, then this is one of the worst indictments of altruism: it means that altruism permits no concept of a self-respecting, self-supporting man—a man who supports his life by his own effort and neither sacrifices himself nor others. It means that altruism permits no view of men except as sacrificial animals and profiteers-on-sacrifice, as victims and parasites—that it permits no concept of a benevolent co-existence among men—that it permits no concept of justice.
...

"To rebel against so devastating an evil, one has to rebel against its basic premise. To redeem both man and morality, it is the concept of 'selfishness' that one has to redeem."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-cuban...
I hesitate posting this because it is so full of immoral concepts and dis-information. Let's start here:-
"Afraid that some big company might steal the idea? That is life. When you run with the elephants there are the quick and the dead. That is a challenge every small company faces."
Since we have a patent system to protect property rights, what he's describing as "that's life" is actually theft. It is no different stealing the products of an inventor's mind than it is to steal physical property. His POV is so obnoxious and immoral. ugh

Cuban sold his MicroSolutions to CompuServe. CS started in the 1960's.

Pathetic.

All action is selfish. Even altruistic action is. How long will the Happiness last?

Most people know Mark Cuban as the (outrageous to some) owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team or as one of the five sharks (venture capitalists) on Shark Tank, a show on CNBC in which entrepeneurs present new business ideas to a group of five venture capitalists. The five venture capitalists grill the budding entrepeneur(s) and compete against each other to see which one(s) will provide capital to the budding entrepeneurs for expansion. This is the rare TV show that is worthwhile for Gulchers to watch.

What most people don't know is that Mark Cuban started the first nationwide online service provider (Compuserve) before selling it to America Online. Cuban was a self-made billionaire by the time he was 30.

Remember this scene from AS1.

Paul Larkin: They say you're intractable, you're ruthless, your only goal is to make money.
Henry Rearden: My only goal is to make money.
Paul Larkin: [whisper] Yes, but you shouldn't say it.

Mark Cuban would not have been acting if he had played Hank Rearden in that scene. That scene characterizes Mark Cuban to a T.

Certainly a purpose of religion is the establishment of a moral code common to all people who adhere to that religion, but the establishment of the moral code was secondary to man's attempt to grasp answers to questions like the origin of life and the origin of the universe.

of course I speak for myself, who else would I be speaking for, my point exactly

I always like to go straight for the throat, and ask them if they believe Robin Hood is a good hero or a bad hero, then as them specifically why.

Then I grill them on what planet stealing is a good thing, or practicing charity with something you did not earn.

Robin Hood was a great example of BAD selfishness, since he stole, coveted, and did it all so he would be looked upon as good while all the time doing evil deeds.

And your 100% correct, the people who condemn the Objectivist, have not read Atlas Shrugged, or the Fountainhead, or my personal favorite, Anthem.

Yes. Any adult can understand this, and almost anyone will take 2 min to view a video. Most people claim to hate Rand, and don't even know the first thing about the books. All that makes this possibly one of the most important short videos I've ever seen.

Understood.
Different times. Most people are growing dumber. They don't know basic history, let alone philosophy. On O'Reilly's Show his guy Watters asks a college student who was George Washington. her response was, "Wasn't he the second president after Lincoln?"

"It isn't 'A is A' one day 'A is B' or 'not A' the next."

Clearly you haven't see how they teach math in California. :-)

If you found yourself entirely alone it would be painfully obvious the importance of the choices you would have to make to live. The most fundamental would be to value rationality versus lapsing into fantasizing to discover where you were and what to do about it. Your life would depend on making choices in accordance with the right standards.

Standards of behavior with regard to others depend on what is proper for the individual in accordance with his nature.

The constructs cooked up in religion are attempt to understand the nature of reality and how to act. That is what the dogmas of their faith are.

I had no intention of being hostile. Excuse me, please.

Ok. I don't know much about Cuban.

You do not have an example of someone who considers Objectivism to be a religion. Your comment is a dishonest, unresponsive smear.

I just asked what his position is.

The universe was not created out of "nothing". Existence did not come from non-existence, which literally does not exist. There is no metaphysical Nothing out of which anything could be created.

If you want to understand how the physical universe has been evolving then consult science. When you don't know, you have nothing to say. Fantasizing about mystical realms will not tell you.

Faith is an invalid means of obtaining knowledge by feeling, resulting in mysticism. It ignores that human thought is not infallible and requires rules of applying reason based on our perception of the world.

To love is to value. Freedom is the absence of coercion. Neither are mysticism.

Your constant, repetitive, inappropriate promotion of religious dogma on a forum for the ideas of Ayn Rand, which you trash in ignorance along with your personal smears and attacks, certainly is zealotry and does not belong here. No one wants you to "shut up", when you don't know something the rational position is to stop talking about it. It is you who has nothing to say. Take it wherever you want to but it is inappropriate to keep intruding on this forum with your religious proselytizing.