AYN RAND QUOTES
Russian-American author (1905-1982)
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The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.
AYN RAND, The Virtue of Selfishness
The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who will seek them.
A culture is made -- or destroyed -- by its articulate voices.
AYN RAND, The Voice of Reason
So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal wlth one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
There is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.
The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendour that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach.
AYN RAND, The Virtue of Selfishness
I am a man. This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mind to kneel before!
A gun is not an argument.
AYN RAND, Capitalism: The Unknown Deal
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
To hold the body of a woman in our arms is neither ugly nor shameful, but the one ecstasy granted to the race of men.
The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.
AYN RAND, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential.
AYN RAND, The Fountainhead
Questions give us no rest. We know not why our curse makes us seek we know not what, ever and ever. But we cannot resist it. It whispers to us that there are great things on this earth of ours, and that we must know them.
Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.
AYN RAND, The Ayn Rand Letter, Jan. 14, 1974
America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance -- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.
AYN RAND, Capitalism: The Unknown Deal
Guilt is a rope that wears thin.
It's true that there's no such thing as free will. We can't help what we are or what we do. It's not our fault. Nobody's to blame for anything. It's all in your background ... and your glands. If you're good, that's no achievement of yours -- you were lucky in your glands. If you're rotten, nobody should punish you -- you were unlucky, that's all.
AYN RAND, The Fountainhead
Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through.
That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call "free will" is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and character. Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of your practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think -- not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment.
Honest people are never touchy about the matter of being trusted.
My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
AYN RAND, The Fountainhead
To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I.'
AYN RAND, The Fountainhead
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.
AYN RAND, The Fountainhead
I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.
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?
AYN RAND, The Fountainhead
Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.
In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.
I am, therefore I'll think.
People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked.
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. 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.
I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey.
AYN RAND, Anthem
The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.
AYN RAND, The Fountainhead
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