Ayn Rand quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Ayn Rand on Wise Famous Quotes.

Those who say theory and practice are two unrelated realms are fools in one and scoundrels in the other.

No man can use his brain to think for another.

I am an intransigent atheist, though not a militant one. This means that I am not fighting against religion - I am fighting for reason.

Its the critic's job to interpret the artist, even to the artist himself.

They smile too much, but it's an ugly kind of smiling: it's not joy, it's pleading.

I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.

We are fornicating in the sight of six billion people.

If you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty.

Any human being who accepts the help of another, knows that good will is the giver's only motive and that good will is the payment he owes in return.

Don't worry. They're all against me. But I have one advantage: they don't know what they want. I do.

A man's rights are not violated by a private individual's refusal to deal with him.

Identify the dominant philosophy of a society and you can predict its future.

The purpose of philosophy is not to help men find a meaning in life, but to prove to them that there isn't any

We alone, of the thousands who walk this earth, we alone in this hour are doing a work which has no purpose save that we wish to do it.

The ' pleasure' of being drunk is obviously the pleasure of escaping from the responsibility of Consciousness.

If lightning strikes a rotten tree and it collapses, it's not the fault of the lightning.

He knew, for the moment, that he felt affection for Roark; an affection that held pain, astonishment and helplessness.

If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences.

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

I made my fortune by being able to spot a certain kind of man.

Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the future
if mankind is to have a future

The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral.

Don't tell me your evaluation. Give me the facts.

Don't fool yourself, my dear. You're much worse than a bitch. You're a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable.

It was the joy of admiration and of one's own ability, growing together.

I'll warn you now that there is one word which is forbidden in this valley: the word 'give.

Two things were impossible to him: to stand still or to move aimlessly.

I threw it down the air shaft. There's a concrete floor below.

I feel that others live up to me, if they want me.

When nothing seems worth the effort - said some stern voice in her mind - it's a screen to hide a wish that's worth too much; what do you want?

The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave.

Who pays for the orgy?

If you believe that you have the right to force me - use your guns openly. I will not help you to disguise the nature of your action.

The justice which would forgive miles of innocent errors of knowledge, would not forgive a single step taken in conscious evil.

His view of the world was simple: there were the able and there were the incompetent; he was not concerned with the latter.

I'm so hungry for any sight of anyone who's able to do whatever it is he's doing!

The walls are cracked and water runs upon them within threads without sound, black and glistening as blood.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.

Throughout his life, whenever he became convinced that a course of action was right, the desire to follow it had come automatically.

You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated

Evil requires the sanction of the victim.

You give them what they profess to like in public. I give them what they really like.

Capitalism is our only moral system. All other systems take advantage of man's rights and liberties.

Whatever it was that others sought in life, their right to what they now felt was all the two of them wished to find.

I used to call people, then I got into e-mailing, then texting, and now I just ignore everyone.

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.

Our first rule here ... is that one must always see for oneself.

He saw, on their faces, that stubbornly evasive look ... the look of a man cheating himself of his own consciousness.

Here, we trade achievements, not failures - values, not needs. We're free of one another, yet we all grow together.

A leash is a rope with a noose at both ends.

We waste our energy fighting one another, instead of presenting a common front to the world.

The crowd would have forgiven anything, except a man who could remain normal under the vibrations of its enormous collective sneer.

No battle was hard, no decision was dangerous where there was no soggy uncertainty, no shapeless evasion to encounter.

The human shapes moving past him in the streets of the city were physical objects without any meaning.

Capitalism is based on individual rights - not on the sacrifice of the individual to the 'public good' of the collective.

The problem is not those who dream, but those who can only dream.

No gift is worth a damn, unless its the most precious thing you've got.

And, after all, you've got to live."
"Not that way," said Roark.

There can be no compromise on moral principles.

The genius must have his freedom and his independence.

I'm not asking you to do your best. I'm asking you to do your job. -Dagny Taggart

To say "I love you" one must first be able to say the "I

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

Don't ever get angry at a man for stating the truth.
Dagny Taggart

Thought is a primitive superstition. Reason is an irrational idea.

Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel.

Wearily distasteful resignation: it seemed easier to attend the wedding than to bother explaining her absence afterwards.

The purpose of the law is not to prevent a future offense, but to punish the one actually committed.

One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one's way to get the best for oneself.

No action could be lower or more futile than for one person to throw upon another the burden of his abdication of choice.

No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the sum of his knowledge.

It is against the sin of forgiveness that I wanted to warn you.

She thought of the world's code that worshipped white lies as an act of mercy - she felt a stab of revulsion against that code..

Of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character - that

You know, I think that only if one feels immensely important can one feel truly light.

What glory can there be in the conquest of a mindless body?

She was incapable of love for any object not of her own choice and she resented anyone's demand for it.

The Council of Scholars has said that we all know the things which exist and therefore the things which are not known by all do not exist.

The unrecognized genius-that's one old story. Have you ever thought of a much worse one-the genius recognized too well?

Nothing can justify injustice.

Collectivism answers: The power of society is unlimited. Society may make any laws it wishes, and force them upon anyone in any manner it wishes.

Men prosper or fail, survive or perish in proportion to the degree of their rationality.

Her face looked as if she knew his worst suffering and it was hers and she wished to bear it like this, coldly, asking no words of mitigation.

whatever we are, it's we who move the world and it's we who'll pull it through.

You don't build for the way people live, but for the way they should live. I don't write about people as they are, but as they could be and should be.

She had been proved right so eloquently, she had thought, that comments were unnecessary.

I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your primer concern within other men

The man who discovers new knowledge is the permanent benefactor of humanity.

The sacred word: EGO

Errors of knowledge are not breaches of morality; no proper moral code can demand infallibility or omniscience.

The theme is the evil of divorcing ideals from life.

Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.

An inventor is a man who asks 'Why?

Say, do you know that gorgeous creature over there?

Let me by the child in that story and declare that the Emperor is naked-or that America is culturally bankrupt.

Nobody has ever given a reason why men should be their brother's keepers.

I like to deal with somebody who has no illusions about getting favors.

She knew that neither his clothes nor the years stood between her and the living intactness of that memory.

The naked shoulder was gown's only ornament