Ayn Rand Quotes

An inventor is a man who asks 'Why?' of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.

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.

An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.

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

A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.

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

A culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiate d masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men.

I am interested in politics so that one day I will not have to be interested in politics.

The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral.

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

Show me your achievement, and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.

The genius must have his freedom and his independence.

Those who say theory and practice are two unrelated realms are fools in one and scoundrels in the other.

Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go.

All life is a purposeful struggle, and your only choice is the choice of a goal.

A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition.

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

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

The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard.

A free mind and a free market are corollaries.

to rest one's case on faith means to concede that reason is on the side of one's enemies- that one has no rational arguments to offer.

The concept of free competition enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms.

Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property.

You know what you are actually in love with? Integrity. The impossible. The clean, consistent, reasonable, self-faithful, the all-of-one-style, like a work of art.

Aquinas brought an Aristotelian view of reason back into European culture, and lighted the way toward the Renaissance.

Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion.

If men want to oppose war, it is statism that they must oppose.

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it.

The problem is not those who dream, but those who can only dream.

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

Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment's torture.

God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive.

We are all brothers under the skin - and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.

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

What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus physical coercion or compulsion.

Without property rights, no other rights are possible.

Collectivism answers: The power of society is unlimited. Society may make any laws it wishes, and force them upon anyone in any manner it wishes.

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

The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work.

All work is an act of philosophy.

Do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement.

Man is a being with free will; therefore, each man is potentially good or evil, and it's up to him and only him (through his reasoning mind) to decide which he wants to be.

The mind is the attribute of man. When man is born, he comes into existence with only one weapon with him--The reasoning mind.

My dear fellow, who will let you?" "That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?

If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.

I take no pride in hopeless longing; I wouldn't hold a stillborn aspiration. I'd want to have it, to make it, to live it.

Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind, and a step that travels unlimited roads.

Government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.

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

To fear to face an issue is to believe that the worst is true.