This is a transcript of the speech "Ayn Rand: More Relevant Now Than Ever" given by Lars Seier Christensen, Co-founder and CEO of Saxo Bank, at Goldmsith's Hall for the Adam Smith Institute's Ayn Rand Lecture on the 29th October 2013
"First of all, I would like to thank The Adam Smith Institute and Eamonn Butler for having me here. I would also like to extend a big thank you to Yaron Brook and the Ayn Rand Institute for suggesting me as the speaker for the second annual Ayn Rand speech at this renowned institution. I am very proud of being offered this opportunity, and would also like to thank all of you in the audience for coming here tonight. I hope it will interest you to hear about both the positive aspects of deploying Ayn Rand in practical, day-to-day life, as well the more grim part of the speech – about a world that is on the wrong track and where change is desperately needed.
Now – I am going to start by quoting someone that anyone who knows me realizes is not my favourite politician. I consider him a very significant part of the problem we currently increasingly. But at least he did us a favour by underlining just exactly how relevant and important a voice Ayn Rand is even today, more than 30 years after her death. Let me quote the 44th president of The United States, Barack Obama, for the first and last time this year, I promise.
“Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we’d pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we’re only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we’re considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that’s a pretty narrow vision. It’s not one that, I think, describes what’s best in America.”
