Ayn Rand

  1. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.
  2. Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.
  3. To say “I love you” one must know first how to say the “I”.
  4. The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
  5. I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.
  6. To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul – would you understand why that’s much harder?
  7. Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.
  8. The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it.
  9. I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life.
  10. She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.
  11. Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons – a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.
  12. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
  13. I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals and I loathe humanity for its failure to live up to these possibilities.
  14. If one’s actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others.
  15. Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.
  16. What is man? He’s just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur.
  17. I don’t wish to be the symbol of anything. I’m only myself.
  18. What is morality, she asked.
    Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price.
  19. It’s not that I don’t suffer, it’s that I know the unimportance of suffering. I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one’s soul and as a permanent scar across one’s view of existence.
  20. Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched
  21. We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
  22. It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust but to know.
  23. She smiled. She knew she was dying. But it did not matter any longer. She had known something which no human words could ever tell and she knew it now. She had been awaiting it and she felt it, as if it had been, as if she had lived it. Life had been, if only because she had known it could be, and she felt it now as a hymn without sound, deep under the little whole that dripped red drops into the snow, deeper than that from which the red drops came. A moment or an eternity- did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist. She smiled, her last smile, to so much that had been possible.
  24. If one doesn’t respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others.
  25. Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer – and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
  26. A rational man never distorts or corrupts his own standards and judgment in order to appeal to the irrationality, stupidity, or dishonesty of others.
  27. When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – You may know that your society is doomed.
  28. Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one’s consciousness can permit the faking of existence.
  29. The freedom of speech of private individuals includes the right to not agree, not to listen, and not to finance one’s own antagonists.
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