Ayn Rand Quotes

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

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

Source: The Fountainhead

“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.”

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)

“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.”

Source: Atlas Shrugged

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

Ayn Rand book Anthem

Source: Anthem

“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.”

Source: Atlas Shrugged

“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?”

Source: The Fountainhead

“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.”

Source: The Fountainhead

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

Source: Atlas Shrugged

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

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
Context: Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage—the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

“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”

Apollo and Dionysus (1969)
Context: [The hippies] were told that love - indiscriminate love for one's fellow man - is the highest virtue, and they obeyed. They were told that the merging of one's self with a herd, tribe, or community is the noblest way for a man to live, and they obeyed. There isn't a philosophical idea of today's establishment which they have not accepted, which they do not share. When they discovered this philosophy did not work, because in fact it cannot work, the hippies had neither the wit nor the courage to challenge it. They found, instead, an outlet for their impotent frustration by accusing their elders of hypocrisy, as if hypocrisy were the only obstacle to the realization of their dreams. And, left blindly, helplessly lobotomized in the face of an inexplicable reality that is not amenable to their feelings, they have no recourse but the shouting of obscenities at anything that frustrates their whims; at man, or at the rainy sky, indiscriminately, with no concept of the difference. It is typical of today's culture that the proponents of seething, raging hostility are taken as advocates of love.

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

Source: The Fountainhead

“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”

Source: Atlas Shrugged