Ayn Rand: Doing

Ayn Rand was Russian-American novelist and philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on doing.

Ayn Rand: 644 quotes39 likes

“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.”

We The Living (1936)
Source: We The Living Part One Chapter 6

“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.”

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

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

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

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

“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.”

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

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

“Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building, when and if you are an architect?”
“Yes.”
“My dear fellow, who will let you?”
“That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

“Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.”

“I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

“Do it first and feel about it afterwards.' - Dagny Taggart”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

“I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life.”

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

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

“I'll give you a hint. Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Variant: Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.
Source: Atlas Shrugged

“To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.”

“The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work.”

“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.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

“How do you always manage to decide?"
"How can you let others decide for you?”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

“Do you know that my personal crusade in life (in the philosophical sense) is not merely to fight collectivism, nor to fight altruism? These are only consequences, effects, not causes. I am out after the real cause, the real root of evil on earth — the irrational.”

Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, 2009, p. 100

“No single one can possess greater wisdom than the many scholars who are elected by all the men for their wisdom. Yet we can. We do. We have fought against saying it, but now it is said. We do not care. We forget all men, all laws and all things save our metals and our wires. So much is still to be learned! So long a road lies before us, and what care we if we must travel it alone!”

Ayn Rand book Anthem

Anthem (1937)