Ayn Rand

Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned.

Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud.

Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence.

Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it.

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it.

Love is our response to our highest values. Love is self-enjoyment. The noblest love is born out of admiration of another’s values.

Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing buy rational actions.

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other.

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplacable 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 and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to reach. The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.

The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who seek them.

Doctors are not servants of their patients, they are traders like everyone else in a free society and they should bear that title proudly considering the crucial importance of the services they offer.

Art is the indespensible medium for the communication of a moral idea.

The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.

A good novel is an indivisible sum; every scene, sequence and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization.

If men want to oppose war, it is *statism* that they must oppose.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value judgments.

An artist does not fake reality--he *stylizes* it.

James, you ought to discover some day that words have an exact meaning.

He was guilty of nothing, except that he earned his own fortune and never forgot that it was his.

Morality is judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, and integrity to stand by it at any price.

The right to life is the source of all rights--and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.

A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue. A viler evil than to throw a man into a sacrificial furnace, is to demand that he leap in, of his own will, and that he build the furnace, besides.

Learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness.

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; A government individual may do nothing except that which is legally permitted.

The upper classes are... a nation's past; the middle class is its future.

Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday...The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production.

Guilt is a rope that wears thin.

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.

The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.

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.

It is not advisable, James, to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener.

I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.

The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.

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.

Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future.

He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost fascinating.

The right to vote is a *consequence*, not a primary cause, of a free social system -- and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.

There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.

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

I can accept anthing, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.

Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

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.

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 your character.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

If devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking...the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.

The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.

The most depraved type of being is that without purpose.

What do you know and how do you know it?

So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.