Ayn Rand Quotes

Professional intellectuals are the voice of a culture and are, therefore, its leaders, its integrators and its bodyguards.

Talent alone is helpless today. Any success requires both talent and luck. And the 'luck' has to be helped along and provided by someone.

Faith and force ... are corollaries: every period of history dominated by mysticism, was a period of statism, of dictatorship, of tyranny.

Love is our response to our highest values.

You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated

The most depraved type of human being ... (is) the man without a purpose.

To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.

I am opposed to all forms of control. I am for an absolute, laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy.

"You were not born to be a second-hander." Howard Roark to Gail Wynand in "The Fountainhead"

She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.

People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too ... Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose.

The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is the conquest of men.

I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place.

Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: 'Account Overdrawn.'

Morality is a code of black and white. When and if men attempt a compromise, it is obvious which side will necessarily lose and which will necessarily profit.

It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.

Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it.

No man can use his brain to think for another.

Collectivism requires self-sacrifice, the subordination of one's interests to those of others.

It stands to reason that if sacrifices are being given, somebody is collecting sacrifices.

... reason accepts no commandments.

I'm not brave enough to be a coward; I see the consequences too clearly.

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.

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

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

If a life can have a 'theme-song' - and I believe every worthwhile one has - mine is [best] expressed in one word: Individualism.

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

Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the future -- if mankind is to have a future

This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before.

This god, this one word: I.

But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.

And man will go on. Man, not men.

Self respect is something that can't be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man's pretense at it.

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

Your soul has a single basic function-the act of valuing.

Mysticism requires the notion of the unknowable, which is revealed to some and withheld from others; this divides men into those who feel guilt and those who cash in on it.

She thought how strange it would be if she ever said 'Hello' to him. One did not greet oneself each morning.

Is it advisable to spread out all the conveniences of culture before people to whom a few steps up a stair to a library is a sufficient deterrent from reading?

I loathe your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved.

To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.

People said it because other people said it. They did not know why it was being said and heard everywhere. they did not give or ask for reasons.

I am interested in politics only in order to secure and protect freedom.

Don't rely on our knowledge of what's best for your future. We do know, but it can't be best until you know it.

Self-esteem is reliance on ones power to think.

Selfishness does not mean only to do things for one's self. One may do things, affecting others, for his own pleasure and benefit. This is not immoral, but the highest of morality.

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

A gun is not an argument.

Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don’t ask them to achieve self-respect. They will hate your soul.

The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind.

A good quotation must be a complete entity. It must be like a headline - sharp, clear, whole.