Ayn Rand Quotes (341 Quotes)

Know what you want in life and go after it. I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals, and I loathe humanity, for its failure to live up to these possibilities.

He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it or dismiss it.

She was incapable of love for any object not of her own choice and she resented anyone's demand for it.

A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack

Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.

When we gaze at the magnificence of an ancient monument and ascribe its achievement to one man, we are guilty of spiritual embezzlement. We forget the army of craftsmen, unknown and unsung, who preceded him in the darkness of the ages, who toiled humbly - all heroism is humble - each contributing his small share to the common treasure of his time. A great building is not the private invention of some genius or other. It is merely a condensation of the spirit of a people.

We shall sleep on moss for many nights, till the beasts of the body come to tear our body. We have no bed now, save the moss,and no future, save the beasts.

In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.

There is no necessity for pain-why, then, is the worst pain reserved for those who will not accept its necessity?

Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched"."

One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor.

But you see, the measure of hell you're able to endure is the measure of your love.

Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.

When I die I hope to go to heaven--whatever that is--and I want to be able to afford the price of admission.

I don't want to see you. I don't like you. I don't like your face. You look like an insufferable egotist. You're impertinent. You're too sure of yourself. Twenty years ago I would have punched your face with the greatest of pleasure.

The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man's first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men.

My dearest one, it is not proper for men to be without names. There was a time when each man had a name of his own to distinguish him from all other men. So let us choose our names. I have read of a man who lived many thousands of years ago, and of all the names in these books, his is the one I wish to bear. He took the light of the gods and brought it to men, and he taught men to be gods. And he suffered for his deed as all bearers of light must suffer. His name is Prometheus.

I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life.

She watched the prairies the rivers, the towns slipping past at an untouchable distance below - and she noted that the sense of detachment one feels when looking at the earth from a plane was the same sense she felt when looking at people: only her distance from people seemed longer. - Dagny Taggart

All I mean is that a board of directors is one or two ambitious men--and a lot of ballast. I mean that groups of men are vacuums. Great big empty nothings. They say we can't visualize a total nothing. Hell, sit at any committee meeting. The point is only who chooses to fill that nothing. It's a tough battle. The toughest. It's simple enough to fight any enemy, so long as he's there to be fought. But when he isn't. . .

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?

Why have you been staring at me ever since we met? Because I'm not the Gail Wynand you'd heard about. You see, I love you. And love is exception-making. If you were in love you'd want to be broken, trampled, ordered, dominated, because that's the impossible, in the inconceivable for you in your relations with people. That would be the one gift, the great exception you'd want to offer the man you loved. But it wouldn't be easy for you.

We went on, cutting through the branches, and it was as if we were swimming through a sea of leaves, with the bushes as waves rising and falling and rising around us, and flinging their green sprays high to the treetops.

It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.

There is no such thing as a lousy job - only lousy men who don't care to do it.

Every loneliness is a pinnacle

One must never allow oneself to acquire an exaggerated sense of one's own importance. There's no necessity to burden oneself with absolutes

By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man-every man-is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose

No principle ever filled anybody's milk bottle

When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer. There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in matter nor in spirit-and if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it.