Ayn Rand Quotes (341 Quotes)

It meant nothing to him any longer, only a faint tinge of sadness--and somewhere within him, a drop of pain moving briefly and vanishing, like a raindrop on the glass of a window, its course in the shape of a question mark.

She fell asleep, lying there, her hand clasping his. Her last awareness, before she surrendered the responsibility of consciousness, was the sense of an enormous void, the void of a city and of a continent, where she would never be able to find the man whom she had no right to seek.

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other.

Your emotional capacity is an empty motor, and your values are the fuel with which your mind fills it. If you choose a mix of contradictions, it will clog your motor, corrode your transmission and wreck you on your first attempt to move with a machine which you, the driver, have corrupted.

Have you felt it too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you- except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them; nothing, not even a sound they can recognize.

I want to know that I've accomplished something. I want to feel that it had some meaning. At the last summing up, I want to be sure it wasn't all-for nothing.

People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they're reflecting too ... Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose.

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.

I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned.

Your eyes are as a flame, but our brothers have neither hope nor fire. Your mouth is cut of granite, but our brothers are soft and humble. Your head is high, but our brothers cringe. You walk, but our brothers crawl. We wish to be damned with you, rather than blessed with all our brothers. Do as you please with us, but do not send us away from you.

He stepped to the window and pointed to the skyscrapers of the city. He said that we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when we would see the lights of New York go out, we would know that our job was done.

It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust but to know.

She started off, walking fast, as if the speed of her steps could give form to the things she felt.

Wasn't it evil to wish without moving- or to move without aim?

A building has integrity, just as a man and just as seldom! It must be true to its own idea, have its own form, and serve its own purpose!"."

Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man's first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.

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.

Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.

When she had gone upstairs, he walked to a window and stood looking up at the sky. His head thrown back, he felt the pull of his throat muscles and he wondered whether the peculiar solemnity of looking at the sky comes, not from what one contemplates, but from that uplift of one's head.

Guilt is a rope that wears thin.

He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost fascinating.

... there's nothing of any importance in life except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they'll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard.

He stood motionless, not turning to the crowd, barely hearing the applause. He stood looking at the judges. There was no triumph in his face, no elation, only the still intensity of contemplating a vision with a bitter wonder that was almost fear. He was seeing the enormity of the smallness of the enemy who was destroying the devastation, past the ruins of great factories, the wrecks of powerful engines, the bodies of invincible men, he had come upon the despoiler, expecting to find a giant and had found a rat eager to scurry for cover at the first sound of a human step. If this is what has beaten us, he thought, the guilt is ours.

Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday... The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production.

Great men can't be ruled.

That love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores. But they don't know it. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who've never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, comtempt, and general indiference, and they call it love. Once you've felt what it means to love as you and I know it - the total passion for the total height - you are unable of anything else.

The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who will seek them.

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.

When personal judgment is inoperative (or forbidden), men's first concern is not how to choose, but how to justify their choice

The adversary she found herself forced to fight was not worth matching or beating it was not a superior ability which she would have found honour in challenging it was ineptitude a grey spread of cotton that seemed soft and shapeless, that could offer no resistance to anything or anybody, yet managed to be a barrier in her way. She stood, disarmed, before the riddle of what made this possible, she could find no answer.

Since a rational man's ambition is unlimited, since his pursuit and achievement of values is a lifelong process and the higher the values, the harder the struggle he needs a moment, an hour or some period of time in which he can experience the sense of his completed task, the sense of living in a universe where his values have been successfully achieved. It is like a moment of rest, a moment to gain fuel to move farther.

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves By lowering your standards By doing work you despise for purchasers your scorn If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity Is this the root of your hatred of money.

What for was the first question he asked about any activity proposed to him and nothing would make him act, if he found no valid answer. He flew through the days of his summer month like a rocket, but if one stopped him in mid-flight, he could always name the purpose of his every random moment. Two things were impossible to him to stand still or to move aimlessly.

You're not sorry. You could've been here if you made the effort. But when did you ever make an effort for anybody but yourself You're not interested in any of us or in anything we do. You think if you pay the bills, that's enough, don't you Money That's all you know. And all you give us is money. Have you even given us any time.

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.

The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life

So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate the use of physical force against others.... When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him by force. It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only against the man who starts its use. No, I do not share his evil or sink to his concept of morality I merely grant him his choice, destruction, the only destruction he had the right to choose his own.

Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.

We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality

The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.

Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason.

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.

Creation comes before distribution -- or there will be nothing to distribute.

It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.

The idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

Nobody stays here by faking reality in any manner whatever.

Don't consider our interests or desires. You have no duty to anyone but yourself.

Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.