You can piss away valuable hours of your life reading Ayn Rand—her wretched appeal to the young, her wretched writing, her wretched person. She was supposed to be on my show; I was kind of sorry she wasn't, because I was kind of laying for her. I did not succumb, as a kid, to being enthused by Ayn Rand, and that sense of power, as every kid was at one time until they outgrew it. The old bag sent over a list of fifteen conditions for appearing with me, or for appearing with anyone, I guess. One of them was, “There will be no disagreeing with Ms. Rand’s philosophy.” [...] I wrote at the bottom of the list, to be sent back to her, “There will be no Ms. Rand, either.”

— Dick Cavett

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "You can piss away valuable hours of your life reading Ayn Rand—her wretched appeal to the young, her wretched writing, her wretched person. She was supposed to be on my show; I was kind of sorry she wasn't, because I was kind of laying for her. I did not succumb, as a kid, to being enthused by Ayn Rand, and that sense of power, as every kid was at one time until they outgrew it. The old bag sent over a list of fifteen conditions for appearing with me, or for appearing with anyone, I guess. One of them was, “There will be no disagreeing with Ms. Rand’s philosophy.” [...] I wrote at the bottom of the list, to be sent back to her, “There will be no Ms. Rand, either.”" in the context of "Dick Cavett, a conversation from an interview by Elon Green (2014)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Ayn Rand" (Quotes about Rand: Alphabetized by author) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Ayn Rand

About Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand (2 February 1905 – 6 March 1982) was a Russian-born American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her bestselling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system called Objectivism.