Ayn Rand Quotes

Serenity comes from the ability to say “Yes” to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say “No” to the wrong choices made by others.
Ayn Rand
A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack
Ayn Rand
There is no such thing as "the right to enslave".A nation can do it , just as a man can become a criminal - but neither can do it by right. It doesn't matter in this context, whether a nation was enslaved by force (like soviet Russia), or by vote (like Nazi Germany).
Ayn Rand
Never place your punch at the beginning of a column nor at the end. Sneak it in where it's least expected. Fill a whole column with drivel, just to get in that one important line.
Ayn Rand
You always play it open, don’t you?” he asked.“I’ve never noticed you doing otherwise.”“I thought I was the only one who could afford to.
Ayn Rand
The capacity for unclouded enjoyment, she thought, does not belong to irresponsible fools; an inviolate peace of spirit is not the achievement of a drifter; to be able to laugh like that is the end result of the most profound, most solemn thinking.
Ayn Rand
Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source the precondition of his productive work - pride is the result.
Ayn Rand
What you think is an illusion created by your glands your emotions and in the last analysis by the content of your stomach. That gray matter you're so proud of is like a mirror in an amusement park which transmits to you nothing but distorted signals from reality forever beyond your grasp.
Ayn Rand
Upper classes are a nation's past the middle-class is its future.
Ayn Rand
Kill reverence and you've killed the hero in man.
Ayn Rand
The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.
Ayn Rand
Every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he'll rise.
Ayn Rand
God forgives those who invent what they need.
Ayn Rand
To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense.
Ayn Rand
The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.
Ayn Rand
Every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he'll rise.
Ayn Rand
God forgives those who invent what they need.
Ayn Rand
To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense.
Ayn Rand
My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.
Ayn Rand
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
Ayn Rand
The entire history of science is a progression of exploded fallacies.
Ayn Rand
Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself anything goes.
Ayn Rand
The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendour that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach.
Ayn Rand
If you write a line of zeroes, it´s still nothing.
Ayn Rand
Well, whose opinion did you take?”“I don’t ask for opinions.”“What do you go by?”“Judgment.”“Well, whose judgment did you take?”“Mine.”“But whom did you consult about it?”“Nobody.
Ayn Rand
...Opinion without a rational process.
Ayn Rand
We fell, but we never let the box fall from our hands. Then we ran. We ran blindly, and men and houses streaked past us in a torrent without shape.
Ayn Rand
He knew that the dread in these men’s minds was not of the fact, but of his naming it—as if the fact had not existed, but his words held the power to make it exist.
Ayn Rand
We knew not where we were going. We only knew that we must run, run to the end of the world, run to the end of our days.
Ayn Rand
Don’t tell me your evaluation. Give me the facts.
Ayn Rand
Nothing can justify injustice.
Ayn Rand
...the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards.
Ayn Rand
It’s a law of survival, isn’t it?—to seek the best. I didn’t come for your sake. I came for mine.
Ayn Rand
If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: 'The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!
Ayn Rand
...dangers, to Francisco, were merely opportunities for another brilliant performance; there were no battles he could lose, no enemies to beat him.
Ayn Rand
Charity must be voluntary.
Ayn Rand
It’s easier to donate a few thousands to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It’s simple to seek substitutes for competence—such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.
Ayn Rand
He stepped to the window and pointed to the skyscrapers of the city. He said that we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when we would see the lights of New York go out, we would know that our job was done.
Ayn Rand
I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.
Ayn Rand
You never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn’t want me to show it. You wanted an act to help your act...
Ayn Rand
She wanted to tell him of the years she had spent looking for men such as he to work with; she wanted to tell him that his enemies were hers, that she was fighting the same battle...
Ayn Rand
May knowledge come to us! What is this secret our heart has understood and yet will not reveal to us, although it seems to beat as if it were endeavoring to tell it?
Ayn Rand
It was the only lie she ever told. She did not do it to protect Francisco; she did it because she felt, for some reason which she could not define, that the incident was a secret too precious to share.
Ayn Rand
She lay on her back, looking up at the sky, feeling no desire to move or think or know that there was any time beyond this moment.
Ayn Rand
I’ll listen if you want me to... But I think I should tell you now that nothing you can say will make any difference. If you don’t mind that, I don’t mind listening.
Ayn Rand
Everything that isn't permitted by The Law is forbidden.
Ayn Rand
Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others.
Ayn Rand
The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages. What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey? But I am done with this creed of corruption. I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: "I.
Ayn Rand
And isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he’s honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he’s great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison.
Ayn Rand
Are you saying,” he asked slowly, “that I rose in your estimation when you found that I wanted you?”“Of course.”“That’s not the reaction of most people to being wanted.”“It isn’t.”“Most people feel that they rise in their own eyes, if others want them.”“I feel that others live up to me, if they want me....
Ayn Rand
Most people feel that they rise in their own eyes, if others want them.”“I feel that others live up to me, if they want me...
Ayn Rand
Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
Ayn Rand
No speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgement on a man than on an idea.
Ayn Rand
Notice how they’ll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once...There’s a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They’ve got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them—because they don’t exist within him and that’s the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man.
Ayn Rand
I take the only desire one can really permit oneself. Freedom, Alvah, freedom.”“You call that freedom?”“To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.
Ayn Rand
Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. The mind is an attribute of the individual.The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary.No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind's moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue.
Ayn Rand
Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.
Ayn Rand
No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation , an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man.There can be no such thing as " the right to enslave .
Ayn Rand
...he had acquired the conviction that one had to concern oneself with the rational, not the insane—that one had to seek that which was right, because the right answer always won—that the senseless, the wrong, the monstrously unjust could not work, could not succeed, could do nothing but defeat itself.
Ayn Rand
Throughout his life, whenever he became convinced that a course of action was right, the desire to follow it had come automatically.
Ayn Rand