I think Rand was speaking informally in an interview, off the top of her head -- as in her earlier Q & A that sparked this thread. She was not writing definitively on the topic. Whenever Rand wrote, she was very careful. She tried to be in conversation, but face it: few people speak as precisely.  [Emphasis added.]

I want to add a short comment to this thread, which nobody has made so far but I consider necessary: it is absolutely wonderful to read of so many people doing their more than very best and even tearing their clothes, as the saying goes, to rescue and whitewash Ayn Rand’s hem from even one small lonely spot of soil. Ayn Rand made a faux pas while speaking, a faux pas she surely regretted and hoped nobody would ever remember, a faux pas she would never have committed in writing for, I think it was Robert who said it, she was very careful when putting an idea down on paper.

The defense of Ayn Rand on this thread is, as said, wonderful. It reminds one of a host of brave fighters coming to the defense of the lady in distress.

But let’s remember the last scene of Billy Wilder’s unforgettable “Some like it hot”: “Well, nobody’s perfect!”

Neither was Ayn Rand. To me she is and will always be mankind’s greatest genius, past, present and future, but she was also a human being, and with a brain constantly working at her level (the imaginable highest possible) and under full pressure, a slip-of-the-tongue may be excused.

After all, Beethoven was a very rich man and yet he lived as a pauper, in utter poverty, so much that Rossini (the Rossini!), who admired him immensely, cried while descending the stairs from the attic where Beethoven lived and where he had visited him. And yet, Beethoven was and remains being a genius (I’m a fan of Van, should you not have noticed it yet.)

Rand also made some mistakes, the way I see it, like choosing a cigarette as a symbol for Objectivism (just because she liked to smoke) or declaring herself as an enemy to a female becoming president of a nation.

But all this doesn’t demean her in the slightest, and that’s the reason why I enjoy so much seeing all these Objectivists behaving as if they were the 7^th Regiment coming to the rescue.

I salute you!

in fact, the cigarette is the only vehicle she used to identify those adhering to Galt’s ideas, i. e. Objectivism.

To Mr. L W Hall

I am not confusing the Sign of the Dollar stamped on the cigarettes from the cigarettes themselves. Matter of fact, Ayn Rand herself selected the cigarette on purpose as a direct symbol of Objectivism. In my reply to William Dwyer above, I mention, directly from “Atlas Shrugged”: “When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind—and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression.” (Part I - Chapter III). This means that Rand made a point of combining the cigarette with thinking and the Sign of the Dollar on it with the philosophy of Objectivism, like this: Cigarette > Sign of the Dollar > Objectivism.

In Barbara Branden’s “The Passion of Ayn Rand” you may read ( Chapter 25 – Page 295) an anecdote related with Collins and Cerf, from the Random House publishing company, who had had made packages of cigarettes with a gold dollar sign printed on each cigarette, which they distributed during a banquet organized at the Plaza Hotel in Rand’s honor. “Ayn smoked several of the cigarettes – she had always been a heavy smoker – and saved the rest.” This is evidently significant. Later on (Chapter 31 - Page 383), when she was already very ill from smoking, she made a point to refuse to take a stand against cigarettes and smoking.

Moreover, apart from the Sign itself standing in Galt’s Gulch and Galt’s drawing the sign in the air at the end of the book, Rand used only the cigarette as the sole physical identification among Galt’s people. Though she herself wore a lapel pin with the sign of the dollar in real life (a gift from friends – the photograph can be seen on the dust cover of “The Virtue of Selfishness”) neither Galt nor any of his followers used the sign as a lapel pin nor printed on neckties or embroidered on handkerchiefs, shirts, etc. Further on, the book contains not one mention of the Strikers wearing a ring with the Sign of the Dollar, in a way similar to many Freemasons who use rings with the symbol of Freemasonry to identify themselves.

I consider that there’s no further need to carry on a debate on what was evidently Rand’s intention: to use the cigarette as a further symbol of Objectivism. But her decision to so do was a mistake, though, as I also mentioned in my writing to Dwyer, it doesn't demean her standing as the most colossal genius ever existing in any way whatsoever.