Ayn Rand Quotes (341 Quotes)

If you want to know the one reason that's taking me back, I'll tell you I cannot bring myself to abandon to destruction all the greatness of the world, all that which was mine and yours, which was made by us and is still ours by right because I cannot believe that men refuse to see, that they can remain blind and deaf to us forever, when the truth is ours and their lives depend on accepting it.... So long as men desire to live, I cannot lose my battle.

America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.

...When you have established that one alternative is good and the other is evil, there is no justification for the choice of a mixture. There is no justification ever for choosing any part of what you know to be evil.

And what is the state but a servant and a convenience for a large number of people, just like the electric light and the plumbing system And wouldn't it be preposterous to claim that men must exist for their plumbing, not the plumbing for the men.

A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.

I'm working to improve my methods, and every hour I save is an hour added to my life.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality

There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions to an individual, but permitted to a mob.

She looked at the crowd and she felt, simultaneously, astonishment that they should stare at her, when this event was so personally her own that no communication about it was possible, and a sense of fitness that they should be here, that they should want to see it, because the sight of an achievement was the greatest gift a human being could offer to others.

An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

What did they seek from him What were they after He had never asked anything of them it was they who wished to hold him, they who pressed a claim on him - and they seemed to have the form of affection, but it was a form which he found harder to endure than any sort of hatred. 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. He wondered what response they could hope to obtain from him in such manner - if his response was what they wanted. And it was, he thought else why those constant complaints, those unceasing accusations about his indifference Why that chronic air of suspicion, as if they were waiting to be hurt He had never had a desire to hurt them, but he had always felt their defensive, reproachful expectation they seemed wounded by anything he said, it was not a matter of his words or actions, it was almost . . . almost as if they were wounded by the mere fact of his being. Don't start imagining the insane - he told himself severely, struggling to face the riddle with the strictest of his ruthless sense of justice. He could not condemn them without understanding and he could not understand.

They proclaim that every man is entitled to exist without labor and, the laws of reality to the contrary notwithstanding, is entitled to receive his 'minimum sustenance' his food, his clothes, his shelter with no effort on his part, as his due and his birthright. To receive it from whom.

Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality

I think it's funny. There was a time when men were afraid that somebody would reveal some secret of theirs that was unknown to their fellows. Nowadays, they're afraid that somebody will name what everybody knows. Have you practical people ever thought that that's all it would take to blast your whole, big, complex structure, with all your laws and guns just somebody naming the exact nature of what you're doing.

Why should this seem so startling 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. Well, their turn has come. Let the world discover who they are, what they do and what happens when they refuse to function. This is the strike of the men of the mind. This is the mind on strike.

Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.

Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it.

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.

I am speaking to those among you who have retained some sovereign shred of their soul, unsold and unstamped ' to the order of others'. If, in the chaos of the motives that have made you listen to the radio tonight, there was an honest, rational desire to learn what is wrong with the world, you are the man whom I wished to address. By the rules and terms of my code, one owes a rational statement to those whom it does concern and who are making an effort to know. Those who are making an effort to fail to understand me, are not a concern of mine.

Just as I support my life, neither by robbery nor alms, but by my own effort, so I do not seek to derive my happiness from the injury or the favour others of, but earn it by my own achievement. Just as I do not consider the pleasure of others as the goal of my life, so I do not consider my pleasure as the goal of the lives of others. Just as there are no contradictions in my values and no conflicts among my desires so there are no victims and no conflicts of interest among rational men, men who do not desire the unearned and do not view one another with a cannibal's lust, men who neither make sacrifice nor accept them.

Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.

What is a demanding pleasure that demands the use of ones mind Not in the sense of problem solving, but in the sense of exercising discrimination, judgment, awareness.

When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.

Who was it that said he needed a fulcrum Give me an unobstructed right-of-way and I'll show them how to move the earth.

Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.

Did it ever occur to you, that there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical There is no conflict, and no call for sacrifice, and no man is a threat to the aims of another if men understand that reality is an absolute not to be faked, that lies do not work, that the unearned cannot be had, that the undeserved cannot be given, that the destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't.

It is not as late as you think. It is merely early in the age of the rebirth of individualism.

I could say to you that I have done more good for my fellow man than you can ever hope to accomplish - but I will not say it, because 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. I will not say that the good of others was the purpose of my work - my own good was my purpose, and I despise the man who surrenders his. I could say to you that you do not serve the public good - that nobody's good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices - that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say that you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation - as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won't. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise.

She can live through it, because we do not hold the belief that this earth is a realm of misery where man is doomed to destruction. We do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and we do not live in chronic dread of disaster. We do not expect disaster until we have specific reason to expect it and when we encounter it, we are free to fight it. It is not happiness, but suffering that we consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that we regard as the abnormal exception in human life.

Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future.

I don't know. But I've watched them here for twenty years and I've seen the change. They used to rush through here, and it was wonderful to watch, it was the hurry of men who knew where they were going and were eager to get there. Now they're hurrying because they are afraid. It's not a purpose that drives them, it's fear. They're not going anywhere, they're escaping. And I don't think they know what it is that they want to escape. They don't look at one another. They jerk when brushed against. They smile too much, but it's an ugly kind of smiling it's not joy, it's pleading. I don't know what it is that's happening to the world.

The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently they are most helplessly in its power.

Whenever anyone accuses some person of being 'unfeeling,' he means that that person is just. He means that that person has no causeless emotions and will not grant him a feeling which he does not deserve. He means that 'to feel' is to go against reason, against moral values, against reality.

Love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one's own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.

There are two kinds of teachers of the Morality of Death the mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle ... those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness.... No matter how loudly they posture in the roles of irreconcilable antagonists, their moral codes are alike, and so are their aims in matter the enslavement of mans body, in spirit the destruction of his mind ... make no mistake about the character of the mystics. To undercut your consciousness has always been their only purpose throughout the ages and power, the power to rule you by force, has always been their only lust.... But it cannot be done to you without your consent. If you permit it to be done, you deserve it.

John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains and he withdrew his fire until the day when men withdraw their vultures.

Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.

If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and ... if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own I would refuse.... I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist.

If any part of your uncertainty, is a conflict between your heart and your mind follow your mind.

Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics - a rational ethics - as a precondition of rebirth.

Reality confronts man with a great many musts, but all of them are conditional the formula of realistic necessity is You must, if and the if stands for man's choice

Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

A rational process is a moral process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest but if devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.

So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?

I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.

Unjust laws have to be fought ideologically they cannot be fought or corrected by means of mere disobedience and futile martyrdom