born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum (Russian: Алиса Зиновьыевна Розенбаум), was a Russian-born American novelist and philosopher.[1] She is widely known for her best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism.

She was an uncompromising advocate of rational individualism and laissez-faire e labour, and for profit), and in which the investment of capital and the production, distribution and prices of commodities and services are determined mainly in a free market. Capitalism has also been called laissez-faire economy, free market economy, free enterprise system, economic liberalism, and economic individualism.">capitalism, and vociferously opposed socialism, altruism, and other contemporary philosophical trends, as well as religion. Her influential and often controversial ideas have attracted both enthusiastic admiration and scathing denunciation.

Rand's writing (both fiction and non-fiction) emphasizes the philosophic concepts of objective reality in metaphysics, reason in epistemology, and rational egoism in ethics. In politics she was a proponent of laissez-faire e labour, and for profit), and in which the investment of capital and the production, distribution and prices of commodities and services are determined mainly in a free market. Capitalism has also been called laissez-faire economy, free market economy, free enterprise system, economic liberalism, and economic individualism.">capitalism and a staunch defender of individual rights, believing that the sole function of a proper government is protection of individual rights (including property rights).

She believed that individuals must choose their values and actions solely by reason, and that "Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others." According to Rand, the individual "must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life."[2] Because she held that faith is antithetical to reason, Rand opposed religion.

Rand decried the initiation of force and fraud, and held that government action should consist only in protecting citizens from criminal aggression (via the police) and foreign aggression (via the military) and in maintaining a system of courts to decide guilt or innocence for objectively defined crimes and to resolve disputes. Her politics are generally described as minarchist and libertarian, though she did not use the first term and disavowed any connection to the second.[3]