Ayn Rand Quotes (341 Quotes)

The world is ours, whenever we choose to claim it, by virtue and grace of the fact that ours is the Morality of Life.

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.

Compromise now, because you'll have to later, anyway, only then you'll have gone through things you'll wish you hadn't.

I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself.

Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue.

The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

The walls are cracked and water runs upon them within threads without sound, black and glistening as blood.

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade...

If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others.

Only if one feels immensely important she had told him, can one feel truly light.

The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.

Why had we let it go? Why had we both been condemned...to an exile among dreary strangers who had made us give up all desire for rest, for friendship, for the sound of human voices? Could I now reclaim a single hour spent talking to my brother, Philip, and give it to Ken Daggart? Who made it our duty to accept, as the only reward for our work, the gray torture of pretending love for those who roused nothing but contempt?

Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence.

I dont work with collectives. I don't consult, i don't co-operate, I don't collaborate.

Never ask people about your work.

There is no affirmation without the one who affirms. in this sense, everything to which you grant your love is yours

There is fear hanging in the air of the sleeping halls, and the air of the streets. Fear walks through the city, fear without name, without shape. All men feel it and none dare speak.

Did I feel a physical desire for him? I did. Was I moved by a passion of my body? I was. Have I experienced the most violent form of sensual pleasure? I have.

If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? . . . Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability.

Only the man who extols the purity of love devoid of desire, is capable of the depravity of a desire devoid of love.

There are no contradictions. If you find one, check your premises.

You have no choice about your capacity to feel that something is good for you or evil, but what you will consider good or evil, what will give you joy or pain, what you will love or hate, desire or fear, depends on your standard of value.

Don't fool yourself, my dear. You're much worse than a bitch. You're a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable.

I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you...Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference

Never ask people. Not about your work. Don't you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?

There's nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even thought we're not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge.

We are one in all and all in one. There are no men but only the great WE, One, indivisible and forever.

Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy--a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind's fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer.

If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.

People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been--for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy.

There are no evil thoughts except one; the refusal to think.

You know, I think that only if one feels immensely important can one feel truly light.

Don't think. Believe. Trust your heart, not your brain. Don't think. Feel. Believe.

I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breathe air. I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival. I've given you, not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need. This is the only way I can want you to love me.

Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others.

They have to take a chance, everything they do is taking a chance, but they feel so much safer when they take it on something they know to be ugly, vain and stupid.

And questions give us no rest. We know not why our curse makes us seek we know not what, ever and ever. But we cannot resist it. It whispers to us that there are great things on this earth of ours, and that we can know them if we try, and that we must know them. We ask, why must we know, but it has no answer to give us. We must know that we may know.

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.

He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth. They professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things for which he could wish to be loved.

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

Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.

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

You still love me - even if there's one expression of it that you will always feel and want, but will not give me no longer. I'm still what I was, and you'll always see it, and you'll always grant me the same response, even if there's a greater one that you grant another man. No matter what you feel for him, it will not change what you feel for me, and it won't treason to either, because it comes from the same root, it's the same payment in answer to the same values.

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

I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life.

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

Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burnt at the stake he'd taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived and he lifted darkness from the face of the Earth.

And that night we knew that to hold the body of women in our arms in neither ugly nor shameful, but the one ecstasy granted to the race of men.

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.

He had to say; words were a lens to focus one's mind, and he could not use words for anything else tonight.