“Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce.”

--excerpted from “Francisco’s Money Speech” in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”

It’s often said that money is the root of all evil, but as novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand so uniquely points out in “Atlas Shrugged,” considered her magnum opus, “Have you ever asked what is the root of money?” Through one of the book’s heroes, Francisco d’Anconia, we learn the true nature of the root of money -- namely that it is the byproduct of those who exercise their minds in the valiant quest for productive achievement.

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