Ayn Rand Quotes

Within the extent of your knowledge, you are right.

I think. I am. I will.

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.

Worry is a waste of emotional reserve".

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

Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man's values, it has to be earned.

The worst evil that you can do, psychologically, is to laugh at yourself. That means spitting in your own face.

It is not fools that I seek to address.

There can be no compromise on moral principles.

But what man does out of despair, is not necessarily a key to his character. I have always thought that the real key is in that which he seeks for his enjoyment.

The cult of moral grayness is a revolt against moral values.

Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live.

Man's character is the product of his premises.

There is no such dichotomy as 'human rights' versus 'property rights.' No human rights can exist without property rights.

Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.

If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.

I don’t approve of religion.

The only man never to be redeemed is the man without passion.

A rational process is a moral process.

All the reasons which made the initiation of physical force evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.

Each man must live as an end in himself and follow his own rational self-interest.

The more you learn, the more you know that you know nothing.

Man's mind is his basic tool of survival.

The evasion of responsibility is the major cause of most peoples frustrations and defeats.

Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection, and the base of a moral existence.

To preserve one's mind intact through a modern college education is a test of courage and endurance, but the battle is worth it and the stakes are the highest possible to man: the survival of reason.

Great men can't be ruled.

An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.

I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself.

You love only those who deserve it.

Faith is the wors curse of mankind, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought.

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

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

A 'whim' is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause.

Whatever road I take, the guiding star is within me; the guiding star and the loadstone which point the way. They point in but one direction. They point to me.

Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence.

The ' pleasure' of being drunk is obviously the pleasure of escaping from the responsibility of Consciousness.

Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration.

I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals and I loathe humanity for its failure to live up to these possibilities.

For the coming of that day shall I fight, I and my sons and my chosen friends. For the freedom of Man. For his rights. For his life. For his honor.

There is fear hanging in the air of the sleeping halls, and the air of the streets. Fear walks through the city, fear without name, without shape. All men feel it and none dare speak.

A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.

No speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgement on a man than on an idea.

I think, therefore I'll think.

...if men are to be ruled, then the enemy is reason.

Art is the indispensable medium for the communication of a moral ideal.

in architecture, mediocrity is more glaringly obvious than in other lines - because there's a huge, physical object such as a building to demonstrate it.

Love is our response to our highest values.

The purpose of man's life...is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question.

Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.