Ayn Rand Quotes

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Quotes About Ayn Rand

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Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man's capacity to live. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
We cannot stop now, even though it frightens us that we are alone in our knowledge. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Do not set out to write with your eyes on the box office. It can't be done. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
One can't love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name. It's one or the other. One doesn't love God and sacrilege impartially. Except when one doesn't know that sacrilege has been committed. Because one doesn't know God. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
I've wanted to want it. I should think it would be exciting to become a dissolute woman. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
It was beautiful and rare, and you have every right to despise me."
She stood pressed to the wall, not moving.
"When you came in, I thought 'Send her away.' But I knew that if you went away, I'd run after you. I thought 'I won't say a word.' But I knew that you'd know it before you left. I love you. I know you'd think kindlier of me if I said that I hate you. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
He had never known fear because, against any disaster, he had held the omnipotent cure of being able to act. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
It seemed natural; natural to the moment's peculiar reality that was sharply clear, but cut off from everything, immediate, but disconnected, like a bright island in a wall of fog, the heightened, unquestioning reality one feels when one is drunk. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
We wish to be damned with you, rather than blessed with all our brothers. Do ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
One's own independent judgment is the means by which one must choose one's actions, but it is not a moral criterion nor a moral validation; only reference to a demonstrable principle can validate one's choices. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.
Dominique Francon ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
If ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that it's your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself - that will be the man who's not after your soul. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
There is really only one proper function: the protection of individual rights. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
As we gain knowledge, we do not become more certain, we become certain of more. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy on life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he's taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment–just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity!–an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
I can't compete and when I do, the rules of engagement change in the middle of the game. I'll let the powers that be vanquish themselves and return in three to five years to sift through the remains. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
The genius must have his freedom and his independence. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
There was an air of luxury about the room, but it was the luxury of expert simplicity. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
A battle? What battle? I hold the whip hand. I don't fight the disarmed." "Are they? They have a weapon against you. It's their only weapon, but it's a terrible one. Ask yourself what it is, some time." "Where do you see any evidence of it?" "In the unforgivable fact that you're as unhappy as you are. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
The structures were austere and simple, until one looked at them and realized what work, what complexity of method, what tension of thought had achieved the simplicity. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
But those who were young had no thought left for spring and those who still thought were not young any longer. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Their eyes were dark and hard and glowing, with no fear in them, no kindness and no guilt. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Within the extent of your knowledge, you are right. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
You know, it's such a peculiar thing
our idea of mankind in general. We all have a sort of vague, glowing picture when we say that, something solemn, big and important. But actually all we know of it is the people we meet in our lifetime. Look at them. Do you know any you'd feel big and solemn about? There's nothing but housewives haggling at pushcarts, drooling brats who write dirty words on the sidewalks, and drunken debutantes. Or their spiritual equivalent. As a matter of fact, one can feel some respect for people when they suffer. They have a certain dignity. But have you ever looked at them when they're enjoying themselves? That's when you see the truth. Look at those who spend the money they've slaved for
at amusement parks and side shows. Look at those who're rich and have the whole world open to them. Observe what they pick out for enjoyment. Watch them in the smarter speak-easies. That's your mankind in general. I don't want to touch it. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals
that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government
that it is not a charter _for_ government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection _against_ the government. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
The only thing that can make a man do something he doesn't like is guilt ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
He did not smile at his employees, he did not take them out for drinks, he never inquired about their families, their love lives or their church attendance. He responded only to the essence of a man: to his creative capacity. In this office one had to be competent. There were no alternatives, no mitigating considerations. But if a man worked well, he needed nothing else to win his employer's benevolence: it was granted, not as a gift, but as a debt. It was granted, not as affection, but as recognition. It bred an immense feeling of self-respect within every man in that office. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
The important consideration is not your opponents, but yourself. It is bad to scream at them, not because it hurts them, they ought to be hurt, but because it hurts you. Anger is a form of recognition. It amounts to admitting that those people are important to you and that they have the power to hurt you. Actually, they haven't. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
There is only one kind of men who have never been on strike in human history. Every other kind and class have stopped, when they so wished, and have presented demands to the world, claiming to be indispensable - except the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Civilization does not have to perish. The brutes are winning only by default. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win - and ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
If capitalism had never existed, any honest humanitarian should have been struggling to invent it. But when you see men struggling to evade its existence, to misrepresent its nature, and to destroy its last remnants - you maybe sure that whatever their motives, love of man is not one of them. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Patience is always rewarded and romance is always round the corner! ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
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. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
The conservatives want to rule man's consciousness; the liberals, his body. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Why yes, I can,' said Midas Mulligan, when he was asked whether he could name a person more evil than the man with a heart closed to pity. 'The man who uses another's pity for him as a weapon. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics - a rational ethics - as a precondition of rebirth. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as "social gains", if businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as "selfish greed". ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
He stood looking at her. She knew that he did not see her. No, she thought, it was not that exactly. He always looked straight at people and his damnable eyes never missed a thing, it was only that he made people feel as if they did not exist. He just stood looking. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
But a few understand that building is a great symbol we live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is a statement of his life. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important - what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right - so long as it's not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic - and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don't know. I've never known it. I'd like to understand. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Of course I need you. I go insane when I see you. You can do almost anything you wish with me. Is that what you want to hear? Almost, Dominique. And the things you couldn't make me do - you could put me through hell if you demanded them and I had to refuse you, as I would. Through utter hell, Dominique. Does that please you? Why do you want to know whether you own me? It's so simple. Of course you do. All of me that can be owned. You'll never demand anything else. But you want to know whether you could make me suffer. You could. What of it? The words did not sound like surrender, because they were not torn out of him, but admitted simply and willingly. She felt no thrill of conquest; she felt herself owned more than ever, by a man who could say these things, know them to be true, and still remain controlled and controlling - as she wanted him to remain. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
This was reality, she thought, this sense of clear outlines, of purpose, of lightness, of hope. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
The more propaganda ... conservatives spread for capitalist economics while at the same time preaching collectivism morally and philosophically , the more nails they'll drive into capitalism's coffin. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Writing is serious business and not for any stray bastard that wants to try it. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
I cannot be called upon to know a negative or to prove a negative. if there is a god and you prove it, that's fine. but you don't tell me you can't know that there isn't. i would say yes i know there isn't because i have been given no evidence. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
He stood looking straight at her. Their understanding was too offensively intimate, because they had never said a word to each other. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
He thought of how convincingly he could describe this scene to friends and make them envy the fullness of his contentment. Why couldn't he convince himself? He had everything he'd ever wanted. He had wanted superiority
and for the last year he had been the undisputed leader of his profession. He had wanted fame
and he had five thick albums of clippings. He had wanted wealth
and he had enough to insure luxury for the rest of his life. He had everything anyone ever wanted. How many people struggled and suffered to achieve what he had achieved? How many dreamed and bled and died for this, without reaching it? ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
One night, lightning struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it the next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside - just a thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it. Years ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
A man can't get sick just because he oughta. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
As she looked at him, her dark gray eyes went slowly from astonishment to stillness, then to a strange expression that resembled a look of weariness, except that it seemed to reflect much more than the endurance of this one moment. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
He felt safe in the oak tree's presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his greatest symbol of strength. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are. ~ Paul Ryan
Ayn Rand quotes by Paul Ryan
Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us." "But I don't think of you." Toohey ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
The power of the sky can be made to do men's bidding. There are no limits to its secrets and its might, and it can be made to grant us anything if we but choose to ask. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
There was so calm, so natural, so total a certainty in the sound of her voice that the mere sound seemed to carry an immense persuasiveness. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
This is the strike of the men of the mind, Miss Taggart. This is the mind on strike. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Listen, here's something we can do: we can look at the moon, sometimes - and, you know, it's the same moon everywhere - and we would be looking at the same thing together that way, you see? ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Dagny and Fransisco d'Anconia?" she said, smiling ruefully, in answer to the curiosity of her friends. "Oh no, it's not a romance. It's an international industrial cartel of some kind. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
John, the self-made man, self-made in every sense, out of nowhere, penniless, parentless, tie-less ... but I've always thought of him as if he had come into the world like Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, who sprang forth from Jupiter's head, fully grown and fully armed. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
To start here, in the United States. This country was the only country in history born, not of chance and blind tribal warfare, but as a rational product of man's mind. This country was built on the supremacy of reason - and, for one magnificent century, it redeemed the world. It will have to do so again. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Do you think nobody would willingly entrust his children to you and pay you for teaching them? Why do you have to extort your fees and collect your pupils by compulsion? ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
She sat beside him in the car, feeling no desire to speak, knowing that neither of them could conceal the meaning of their silence. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
It's a curse, you know, to be able to look higher than you're allowed to reach. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
My pride and my power of vision were all that I owned when I started - and whatever I achieved, was achieved by means of them. Both are greater now. Now I have the knowledge of the superlative value I had missed: of my right to be proud of my vision. The rest is mine to reach. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
While, politically, a mixed economy preserves the semblance of an organized society with a semblance of law and order, economically it is the equivalent of the chaos that had ruled China for centuries: a chaos of robber gangs looting-and draining-the productive elements of the country. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
All public interest' legislation (and any distribution of money taken by force from some men for the unearned benefit of others) comes down ultimately to the grant of an undefined undefinable, non-objective, arbitrary power to some government officials. The worst aspect of it is not that such a power can be used dishonestly, but that it cannot be used honestly. The wisest man in the world, with the purest integrity, cannot find a criterion for the just, equitable, rational application of an unjust, inequitable, irrational principle. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act - the process of reason - must be performed by each man alone. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Don't you know that most people take most things because that's what's given them, and they have no opinion whatever? Do you wish to be guided by what they expect you to think they think or by your own judgment? ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
I won't say that we couldn't get along without you - we can. I won't beg you to stay here for our sake - I didn't think I'd ever revert to that rotten old plea, but, boy! - what a temptation it was, I can almost see why people do it. I ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
She marveled at the futility of his method: he was acting as if, by naming her opinion in advance, he would make her unable to alter it. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
It is so commonplace," she drawled, "to be understood by everybody. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
The ethics of altruism has created the image of the brute, as its answer, in order to make men accept two inhuman tenets: (a) that any concern with one's own interests is evil, regardless of what these interests might be, and (b) that the brute's activities are in fact to one's own interest (which altruism enjoins man to renounce for the sake of his neighbors). For a view of the ~ Ayn Rand
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Wearily distasteful resignation: it seemed easier to attend the wedding than to bother explaining her absence afterwards. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
I do not seek to derive my happiness from the injury or the favor of others, but earn it by my own achievement. Just ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
They sat together at a table in the corner of a basement speakeasy, and they drank beer, and Mike related his favorite tale of how he had fallen five stories when a scaffolding gave way under him, how he had broken three ribs but lived to tell it, and Roark spoke of his days in the building trades. Mike did have a real name, which was Sean Xavier Donnigan, but everyone had forgotten it long ago; he owned a set of tools and an ancient Ford, and existed for the sole purpose of traveling around the country from one big construction job to another. People meant very little to Mike, but their performance a great deal. He worshipped expertness of any kind. He loved his work passionately and had no tolerance for anything save for other single-track devotions. He was a master in his own field and he felt no sympathy except for mastery. His view of the world was simple: there were the able and there were the incompetent; he was not concerned with the latter. He loved buildings. He despised, however, all architects. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
FCC power rests on ... nonobjective law (which) delivers men's lives, fortunes, careers, ambitions into the arbitrary power of a bureaucrat who can reward or punish at whim. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
The evasion of responsibility is the major cause of most peoples frustrations and defeats. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society ... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil. ~ Gore Vidal
Ayn Rand quotes by Gore Vidal
Men prosper or fail, survive or perish in proportion to the degree of their rationality. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
I win by means of nothing but logic and I surrender to nothing but logic. I do not surrender my reason or deal with men who surrender theirs. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
I tend to really be partial to Ayn Rand, and to The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. ~ Clarence Thomas
Ayn Rand quotes by Clarence Thomas
When facing society, the man most concerned, the man who is to do the most and contribute the most, has the least to say. It's taken for granted that he has no voice and his reasons he could offer are rejected in advance as prejudiced
since no speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgment on a man than an idea. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Like a weighted diver sinking in an ocean
of mediocrity, under the pressure of men with
gelatin eyes, rubber voices, spiral-shaped
convictions, non-committal souls and non-committing
hands ... ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money? ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Action without thought is mindlessness, and thought without action is hypocritical. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
When men abandon reason, physical force becomes their only means of dealing with one another and of settling disagreements. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
The thing for me about Ayn Rand is that her philosophy is the only one applicable to the world today - in every sense. If you take her ideas, then take them farther in your own mind, you can find answers to pretty well everything on an individual basis. ~ Neil Peart
Ayn Rand quotes by Neil Peart
The only thing that counts in life is solid, material assets. It's no time for theories when everything is falling to pieces around us. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Roark walked now to these drawings; they were the first things to be packed. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Is it advisable to spread out all the conveniences of culture before people to whom a few steps up a stair to a library is a sufficient deterrent from reading? ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
The audience looked at him. They felt he had no chance. They could drop the nameless resentment, the sense of insecurity which he aroused in most people. And so, for the first time, they could see him as he was: a man totally innocent of fear. The fear of which they thought was not the normal kind, not a response to a tangible danger, but the chronic, unconfessed fear in which they all lived. They remembered the misery of the moments when, in loneliness, a man thinks of the bright words he could have said, but had not found, and hates those who robbed him of his courage. The misery of knowing how strong and able one is in one's own mind, the radiant picture never to be made real. Dreams? Self-delusion? Or a murdered reality, unborn, killed by that corroding emotion without name - fear - need - dependence - hatred? ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Many days passed before we could speak to the Golden One again. But then came the day when the sky turned white, as if the sun had burst and spread its flame in the air, and the fields lay still without breath, and the dust of the road was white in the glow. So the women of the field were weary, and they tarried over their work, and they were far from the road when we came. But the Golden One stood alone at the hedge, waiting. We stopped and we saw that their eyes, so hard and scornful to the world, were looking at us as if they would obey any word we might speak. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Well, whose opinion did you take?"
"I don't ask for opinions."
"What do you go by?"
"Judgment."
"Well, whose judgment did you take?"
"Mine."
"But whom did you consult about it?"
"Nobody. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
She thought: at this moment, the glass stem between his fingers feels just like the one between mine. We have this much in common. ~ Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand quotes by Ayn Rand
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