Ayn Rand Quotes

“The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it.”

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

“When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.”

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

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

“For the coming of that day shall I fight, I and my sons and my chosen friends. For the freedom of Man. For his rights. For his life. For his honor.”

“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.”

“Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.”

“What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can't stand still. It must grow or perish.”

“I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life.”

“… if the majority of men cannot know what is good for them, each for himself, how can they know what is good for others by proxy? If they are to be controlled by specialists, how and by what standard can they choose the specialist?”

“Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don’t ask them to achieve self-respect. They will hate your soul.”

“John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains—and he withdrew his fire—until the day when men withdraw their vultures.”

“I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire.”

“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.”

“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? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.”

“Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent.”

“Any group or “collective,” large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members.”

“There is no such thing as duty. If you know that a thing is right, you want to do it. If you don't want to do it—it isn't right. If it's right and you don't want to do it—you don't know what right is and you're not a man.”

“Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”

“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.”

“The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.”

“Have you felt it too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you- except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them; nothing, not even a sound they can recognize.”

“Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.”

“A government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.”

“I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals and I loathe humanity for its failure to live up to these possibilities.”

“But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself.”

“A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack”

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

“If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”

“Remember also that the smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”

“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.”

“He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see.”

“My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.”

“She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.”

“Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.”

“It is typical of today's culture that the proponents of seething, raging hostility are taken as advocates of love.”

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

“If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.”

“Who is John Galt?”

“I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you… Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference”

“I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach.”

“The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”

“When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit.”

“People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk.”

“Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.”

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.”

“Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.”

“There is no such thing as a lousy job - only lousy men who don't care to do it.”

“Patience is always rewarded and romance is always round the corner!”

“If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others.”

“Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment's torture.”

“Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions.”

“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.”

“Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?”

“She knew that even pain can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the witness…”

“What is man? He's just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur.”

“But I don't think of you.

(Howard Roark)”

“Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.”

“It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.”

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

“Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.”