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There can be no compromise between a property owner and a burglar; offering the burglar a single teaspoon of one’s silverware would not be a compromise, but a total surrender - the recognition of his right to one’s property. (…) And once the principle of unilateral concessions is accepted as the base of a relationship by both parties, it is only a matter of time before the burglar would seize the rest. (…)
There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept “just a few controls” is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of the government’s unlimited, arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement. (…)###
There can be no compromise on basic principles or on fundamental issues. What would you regard as a compromise between life and death? Or between truth and falsehood? Or between reason and irrationality?
Today, however, when people speak of “compromise”, what they mean is not legitimate mutual concession or a trade, but precisely the betrayal of one’s principles - the unilateral surrender to any groundless, irrational claim. The root of that doctrine is ethical subjectivism, which holds that a desire or a whim is a irreducible moral primary, that every man is entitled to any desire he might feel like asserting, that all desires have equal moral validity, and that the only way men can get along together is by giving in to anything and “compromising” with anyone. It is not hard to see who would profit and who would loose by such a doctrine.
The immorality of this doctrine - and the reason why the term “compromise” implies, in today’s usage, an act of moral treason – lies in the fact that it requires men to accept ethical subjectivism as the basic principle superseding all principles in human relationships and to sacrifice anything as a concession to one another’s whims.
The question “Doesn’t life require compromise?” is usually asked by those who fail to differentiate between a basic principle and a concrete, specific wish. Accepting a lesser job than one wanted, is not a “compromise”. Taking orders from one’s employer on how to do the work for which one is hired, is not a “compromise”. Failing to have a cake after one has eaten it, is not a “compromise”.

Integrity does not consist of loyalty to one’s subjective whims, but of loyalty to rational principles. A “compromise” (in the unprincipled sense of that word) is not a breach of one’s comfort, but a breach of one’s convictions. A “compromise” does not consist of doing something one dislikes, but of doing something one knows to be evil. Accompanying one’s husband or wife to a concert, when one does not care for music, is not a “compromise”; surrendering to his or her irrational demands for social conformity, for pretended religious observance or for generosity toward boorish in-laws, is. Working for an employer who does not share one’s ideas, is not a “compromise”; pretending to share his ideas, is. Accepting a publisher’s suggestions to make changes in one’s manuscript, when one sees the validity if his suggestions, is not a “compromise”; making such changes in order to please “the public”, against one’s own judgment and standards, is.
The excuse, given in all such cases, is that the “compromise” is only temporary and that one can reclaim one’s integrity at some indeterminate future date. But one cannot correct a husband’s or wife’s irrationality by giving in to it or encouraging it to grow. One cannot achieve the victory of one’s ideas by helping to propagate their opposite. One cannot offer a literary masterpiece, “when one has become rich and famous”, to a following one has acquired as trash. If one found it difficult to maintain one’s loyalty to one’s own convictions at the start, a succession of betrayals – which helped to augment the power of the evil one lacked the courage to fight – will not make it easier at a later date, but will make it virtually impossible.
There can be no compromise on moral principles. (…) The next time you are tempted to ask: “Doesn’t life require compromise?” translate that question into its actual meaning: “Doesn’t life require the surrender of that which is true and good to that which is false and evil?” The answer is that that precisely what life forbids – if one whishes to achieve anything but a stretch of tortured years spent in progressive self-destruction.
(July 1962)

Ayn Rand - "The virtue of selfishness", pp 79-81

Pré-politicosPoliticosmeta-politicosiliberalThere can be no compromise between a property owner and a burglar; offering the burglar a single teaspoon of one’s silverware would not be a compromise, but a total surrender - the recognition of his right to one’s property. (…) And once the principle of unilateral concessions is accepted as the base of a relationship by both parties, it is only a matter of time before the burglar would seize the rest. (…)
There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept “just a few controls” is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of the government’s unlimited, arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement. (…)###
There can be no compromise on basic principles or on fundamental issues. What would you regard as a compromise between life and death? Or between truth and falsehood? Or between reason and irrationality?
Today, however, when people speak of “compromise”, what they mean is not legitimate mutual concession or a trade, but precisely the betrayal of one’s principles - the unilateral surrender to any groundless, irrational claim. The root of that doctrine is ethical subjectivism, which holds that a desire or a whim is a irreducible moral primary, that every man is entitled to any desire he might feel like asserting, that all desires have equal moral validity, and that the only way men can get along together is by giving in to anything and “compromising” with anyone. It is not hard to see who would profit and who would loose by such a doctrine.
The immorality of this doctrine - and the reason why the term “compromise” implies, in today’s usage, an act of moral treason – lies in the fact that it requires men to accept ethical subjectivism as the basic principle superseding all principles in human relationships and to sacrifice anything as a concession to one another’s whims.
The question “Doesn’t life require compromise?” is usually asked by those who fail to differentiate between a basic principle and a concrete, specific wish. Accepting a lesser job than one wanted, is not a “compromise”. Taking orders from one’s employer on how to do the work for which one is hired, is not a “compromise”. Failing to have a cake after one has eaten it, is not a “compromise”.

Integrity does not consist of loyalty to one’s subjective whims, but of loyalty to rational principles. A “compromise” (in the unprincipled sense of that word) is not a breach of one’s comfort, but a breach of one’s convictions. A “compromise” does not consist of doing something one dislikes, but of doing something one knows to be evil. Accompanying one’s husband or wife to a concert, when one does not care for music, is not a “compromise”; surrendering to his or her irrational demands for social conformity, for pretended religious observance or for generosity toward boorish in-laws, is. Working for an employer who does not share one’s ideas, is not a “compromise”; pretending to share his ideas, is. Accepting a publisher’s suggestions to make changes in one’s manuscript, when one sees the validity if his suggestions, is not a “compromise”; making such changes in order to please “the public”, against one’s own judgment and standards, is.
The excuse, given in all such cases, is that the “compromise” is only temporary and that one can reclaim one’s integrity at some indeterminate future date. But one cannot correct a husband’s or wife’s irrationality by giving in to it or encouraging it to grow. One cannot achieve the victory of one’s ideas by helping to propagate their opposite. One cannot offer a literary masterpiece, “when one has become rich and famous”, to a following one has acquired as trash. If one found it difficult to maintain one’s loyalty to one’s own convictions at the start, a succession of betrayals – which helped to augment the power of the evil one lacked the courage to fight – will not make it easier at a later date, but will make it virtually impossible.
There can be no compromise on moral principles. (…) The next time you are tempted to ask: “Doesn’t life require compromise?” translate that question into its actual meaning: “Doesn’t life require the surrender of that which is true and good to that which is false and evil?” The answer is that that precisely what life forbids – if one whishes to achieve anything but a stretch of tortured years spent in progressive self-destruction.
(July 1962)"The virtue of selfishness"pp 79-81

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