Ayn Rand: Man

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Self respect is something that can't be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man's pretense at it.”

“The most depraved type of human being… (is) the man without a purpose.”

“Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants.”

“The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.”

“A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue.”

“No speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgement on a man than on an idea.”

“Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”