Refusing to Judge — Ayn Rand

The man who refus­es to judge, who nei­ther agrees nor dis­agrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes respon­si­bil­i­ty, is the man respon­si­ble for all the blood that is now spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, exis­tence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it van­ish into a looter’s stom­ach, is an absolute.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the oth­er is wrong, but the mid­dle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accept­ing the respon­si­bil­i­ty of choice. But the man in the mid­dle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pre­tend that no choice or val­ues exist, who is will­ing to sit out the course of any bat­tle, will­ing to cash in on the blood of the inno­cent or to crawl on his bel­ly to the guilty, who dis­pens­es jus­tice by con­demn­ing both the rob­ber and the robbed to jail, who solves con­flicts by order­ing the thinker and the fool to meet each oth­er halfway. In any com­pro­mise between food and poi­son, it is only death that can win. In any com­pro­mise between good and evil, it is only evil that can prof­it. In that trans­fu­sion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the com­pro­mise is the trans­mit­ting rub­ber tube.”
― Ayn RandAtlas Shrugged

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