Ayn Rand Quotes

Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.

Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.

But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself.

Do not let the hero in your soul perish.

Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.

Believing in fate produces fate. Believing in freedom will create infinite possibilities.

It is not advisable to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener.

It's good to suffer. Dont complain. Bear, bow, accept - and be grateful that God has made you suffer. For this makes you better than the people who are laughing and happy.

A leash is a rope with a noose at both ends.

As long as men are free to speak, a small, rational minority will always prevail over an irrational majority.

The difference between animals and humans is that animals change themselves for the environment, but humans change the environment for themselves.

Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach.

The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow.

Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.

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

Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

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.

There are only two means by which men can deal with one another: guns or logic. Force or persuasion. Those who know that they cannot win by means of logic, have always resorted to guns.

If you know that this life is all that you have, wouldn't you make the most of it?

The worst guilt is to accept an undeserved guilt — and that is what you have been doing all your life.

If a man wants love he should correct his weaknesses, or his flaws, and he may deserve it. But he cannot expect the unearned, either in love or in money; either in matter or in spirit.

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

Don't ever get angry at a man for stating the truth.

If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as "social gains", if businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as "selfish greed".

People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk.

I would step in the way of a bullet if it were aimed at my husband. It is not self-sacrifice to die protecting that which you value: If the value is great enough, you do not care to exist without it.

Thinking men cannot be ruled; ambitious men do not stagnate.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion...th at in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing-you may know that your society is doomed.

In the temple of his spirit, each man is alone.

I guard my treasures: my thoughts, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.

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

Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.

A rational man is guided by his thinking - by a process of Reason - not by his feelings and desires.

Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one’s consciousness can permit the faking of existence.

Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.

Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism.

Don't ever give up what you want in life. The struggle is worth it.

A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race - and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.

Economics departments are dominated by Marxism, which is taken straight or on the rocks, in the form of Keynesianism.

Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.

There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.

Get the hell out of my way!

The great creators-the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors-stood alone against the men of their time.

But there are people who'll try to hurt you through the good they see in you--knowing that it's the good, needing it and punishing you for it. Don't let it break you when you discover that.

All depressions are caused by government interference and the cure is always offered to take more of the poison that caused the disaster. Depressions are not the result of a free economy.

I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life.

I say that man is entitled to his own happiness and that he must achieve it himself. But that he cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy.

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