Ayn Rand

Quotes

• “Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; politica...”
• “Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indu...”
• “Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves...”
• “Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees th...”
• “My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his l...”
• “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 be...”
• “Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it p...”
• “Every form of happiness if one, every desire is driven by the same motor--by our love for a single value, for the highes...”
• “The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those ...”
• “If that which we have found is the corruption of solitude, then what can men wish for save corruption? If this is the gr...”
• “He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free t...”
• “In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is...”
• “An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutti...”
• “I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, th...”
• “The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minor...”
• “Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration.”
• “Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential.”
• “An inventor is a man who asks 'Why?' of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.”
• “Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?”
• “A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.”
• “The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.”
• “The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.”
• “Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.”
• “When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.”
• “The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it.”
• “A culture is made — or destroyed — by its articulate voices.”
• “Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.”
• “Man is an end in himself.”