Ayn Rand Quotes

That an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.

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.

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

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

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.

The fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.

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

I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.

Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.

Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.

The entire history of science is a progression of exploded fallacies.

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

What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.

Do not help your jailers to pretend that their jail is your natural state of existence.

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

There's nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.

Freedom comes from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue.

It's not about who's going to let me; it's about who's going to stop me.

I am a man who does not exist for others.

Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence.

Living in a society, instead of on a desert island, does not relieve a man of the responsibility of supporting his own life.

There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.

There has never been a philosophy, a theory or a doctrine, that attacked (or 'limited') reason, which did not preach submission to the power of some authority.

If parasitism, favoritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence.

It is morally obscene to regard wealth as an anonymous, tribal product and to talk about 'redistributing' it.

The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.

The mark of an honest man... is that he means what he says and knows what he means.

You must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences.

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

Politically, the goal of today’s dominant trend is statism. Philosophically, the goal is the obliteration of reason; psychologically, it is the erosion of ambition.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach.

If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.

Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.

Some day, the world will discover that, without thought, there can be no love.

When you force a man to act against his own choice and judgment, it's his thinking that you want him to suspend.

The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave.

Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves.

What is man? He's just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur.

The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves.

Evil requires the sanction of the victim.

Capitalism is our only moral system. All other systems take advantage of man's rights and liberties.

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.

The purpose of the law is not to prevent a future offense, but to punish the one actually committed.

Ideas are the greatest and most crucially practical power on earth.

Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions.

We have only two sources of information about the character of the people around us: we judge them by what they do and by what they say (particularly the first).

Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.

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

I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.