Ayn Rand Quotes

There can be no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil.

Nobody has ever given a reason why men should be their brother's keepers.

If you agree with some tenets of Objectivism, but disagree with others, do not call yourself an Objectivist; give proper authorship credit for the parts you agree with

The causes of illusions are not pretty to discover. They're either vicious or tragic.

It was the joy of admiration and of one's own ability, growing together.

This was the great clarity of being beyond emotion, after the reward of having felt everything one could feel.

It is fairly easy to grasp abstract moral principles; it can be very difficult to apply them to a given situation, particularly when it involves the moral character of another person.

A man of independent judgment is a man of profound self-esteem.

Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims.

You know, I think that only if one feels immensely important can one feel truly light.

The view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve, my life and my values could not bring me to that.

Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential.

I think that when in doubt about the truth of an issue, it's safer and in better taste to select the least numerous of the adversaries.

Do it first and feel about it afterwards.' - Dagny Taggart

I understood that centuries of chains and lashes will not kill the spirit of man nor the sense of truth within him.

Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.

He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it or dismiss it.

What is kinder--to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility beyond their endurance--or to see them as they are, and accept it because it makes them comfortable?

Their eyes were dark and hard and glowing, with no fear in them, no kindness and no guilt.

Sacrifice is the surrender of that which you value in favor of which you dont

Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious

Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.

Kill reverence and you've killed the hero in man.

A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack

It's the hardest thing in the world - to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kinds of courage.

Only the man who extols the purity of love devoid of desire, is capable of the depravity of a desire devoid of love.

A man's rights are not violated by a private individual's refusal to deal with him.

It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own.

If you write a whole line of zeroes, it's still — nothing.

I want to be prepared to claim the greatest virtue of all - that I was a man who made money

An emotion as much tells you nothing about reality, beyond the fact that something makes you feel something.

To hold an unchanging youth is to reach at the end, the vision with which one started.

Guilt is altruism's stock in trade, and the inducing of guilt is its only means of self-perpetuati on.

In a fully free society, taxation-or, to be exact, payment for governmental services-would be voluntary.

A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry.

Genius is an exaggeration of dimension. So is elephantiasis. Both may be only a disease.

It's not a question of who will allow me to do it, it's a question of who will stop me.

I am only concerned with politics so I may see the day when I don't have to be concerned with politics.

All public projects are mausoleums, not always in shapes, but always in cost.

Did I feel a physical desire for him? I did. Was I moved by a passion of my body? I was. Have I experienced the most violent form of sensual pleasure? I have.

I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals.

What whip lashed them to their knees in shame and submission? The worship of the word "We.

By what he chooses to present and by how he presents it, any author expresses his fundamental, metaphysical values.

The fact that a man has no claim on others ... does not preclude or prohibit good will among men and does not make it immoral to offer or to accept voluntary, non-sacrificial assistance.

The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.

Whenever anyone accuses some person of being 'unfeeling,' he means that that person is just.

Men prosper or fail, survive or perish in proportion to the degree of their rationality.

A society without intellectuals is like a body without a head

Emotions are inherent in your nature, but their content is dictated by your mind. Your emotional capacity is an empty motor, and your values are the fuel with which your mind fills it.

Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality