Ayn Rand was a Russian-American writer and philosopher. She is most famous for her two novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, which espouse her philosophy of Objectivism. Her ideas have had a major influence on modern libertarianism, capitalism, and the American conservative movement. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Ayn Rand on love, government, success.
So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?
Potentially, 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.
Defiance, not obedience, is the American's answer to overbearing authority.
Ayn Rand Quotes About Love
I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. — Ayn Rand
To say I love you one must know first how to say the I. — Ayn Rand
If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others. — Ayn Rand
The question isn’t who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.
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. — Ayn Rand
Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another. — Ayn Rand
If capitalism had never existed, any honest humanitarian should have been struggling to invent it. But when you see men struggling to evade its existence, to misrepresent its nature, and to destroy its last remnants - you maybe sure that whatever their motives, love of man is not one of them. — Ayn Rand
Thinking men cannot be ruled.
You must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. — Ayn Rand
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. — Ayn Rand
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. — Ayn Rand
To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love - because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed value. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone — Ayn Rand
motivational quote by Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Quotes About Government
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. — Ayn Rand
The government was set to protect man from criminals, and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government. — Ayn Rand
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. — Ayn Rand
The question isn't who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.
Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority. — Ayn Rand
The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals ... it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government ... it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government. — Ayn Rand
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren — Ayn Rand
The government was set to protect man from criminals-and the constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed at private citizens, but against the government-as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power. — Ayn Rand
Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others. — Ayn Rand
The source of the government's authority is “the consent of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose. — Ayn Rand
A government is the most dangerous threat to man — Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Quotes About Success
The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity. — Ayn Rand
every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing, but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he'll rise. — Ayn Rand
Talent alone is helpless today. Any success requires both talent and luck. And the 'luck' has to be helped along and provided by someone. — Ayn Rand
I refuse to apologize for my ability -- I refuse to apologize for my success -- I refuse to apologize for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it. — Ayn Rand
The men of the press, who despised their own profession, did not know why they were enjoying it today. One of them, a young man with years of notorious success behind him and a cynical look of twice his age, said suddenly, 'I know what I'd like to be: I wish I could be a man who covers news!' — Ayn Rand
In order to deal with reality successfully - to pursue and achieve the values which his life requires - man needs self-esteem; he needs to be confident of his efficacy and worth. — Ayn Rand
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
Ayn Rand Quotes About Capitalism
The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles. — Ayn Rand
Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel. — Ayn Rand
We are now moving towards complete collectivism or socialism, a system under which everybody is enslaved to everybody. — Ayn Rand
One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary. — Ayn Rand
Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships. — Ayn Rand
The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. — Ayn Rand
I say that man is entitled to his own happiness and that he must achieve it himself. But that he cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy. — Ayn Rand
Capitalism is based on individual rights - not on the sacrifice of the individual to the 'public good' of the collective. — Ayn Rand
Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear. — Ayn Rand
Contrary to the vulgar belief that men are motivated primarily by materialistic considerations, we now see the capitalist system being discredited and destroyed all over the world, even though this system has given men the greatest material comforts. — Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Quotes About Work
The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. — Ayn Rand
There's nothing of any importance in life — except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value. — Ayn Rand
Never ask people. Not about your work. Don't you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know? — Ayn Rand
Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property. — Ayn Rand
If [people] place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man's life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite. — Ayn Rand
Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work, pride is the result. — Ayn Rand
The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work. — Ayn Rand
Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers — show me yours — show me that it is possible — show me your achievement — and the knowledge will give me courage for mine. — Ayn Rand
I'm working to improve my methods, and every hour I save is an hour added to my life. — Ayn Rand
Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live. — Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Quotes About Reality
To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality. — Ayn Rand
You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. — Ayn Rand
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. — Ayn Rand
To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight — Ayn Rand
Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments. — Ayn Rand
A rational mind does not work under compulsion; it does not subordinate its grasp of reality to anyone's orders, directives, or controls; it does not sacrifice its knowledge, its view of the truth, to anyone's opinions, threats, wishes, plans. — Ayn Rand
Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Don't ignore your own desires.... Don't sacrifice them. Examine their cause. There is a limit to how much you should have to bear. — Ayn Rand
Reality confronts man with a great many musts, but all of them are conditional the formula of realistic necessity is You must, if and the if stands for man's choice — Ayn Rand
What you think is an illusion created by your glands, your emotions and, in the last analysis, by the content of your stomach. That gray matter you're so proud of is like a mirror in an amusement park which transmits to you nothing but distorted signals from reality forever beyond your grasp. — Ayn Rand
The man of authentic self-confidence is the man who relies on the judgment of his own mind. Such a man is not malleable; he may be mistaken, he may be fooled in a given instance, but he is inflexible in regard to the absolutism of reality, i.e., in seeking and demanding truth. — Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Quotes About Happiness
Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values. — Ayn Rand
No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy. — Ayn Rand
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
Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched". — Ayn Rand
You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live — Ayn Rand
Love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one's own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love. — Ayn Rand
Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. — Ayn Rand
Learn to value yourself, which means fight for your happiness. — Ayn Rand
Every form of happiness if one, every desire is driven by the same motor--by our love for a single value, for the highest potentiality of our own existence--and every achievement is an expression of it. — Ayn Rand
Man cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy. — Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Quotes About Life
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. — Ayn Rand
Live a life as a monument to your soul. — Ayn Rand
Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death. — Ayn Rand
Individualism regards man-every man-as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. — Ayn Rand
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. — Ayn Rand
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? — Ayn Rand
The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose. — Ayn Rand
I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. — Ayn Rand
The worst guilt is to accept an undeserved guilt — and that is what you have been doing all your life. — Ayn Rand
Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. — Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Quotes About Money
Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. — Ayn Rand
Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. — Ayn Rand
Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. — Ayn Rand
You'll get everything society can give a man. You'll keep all the money. You'll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You'll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I - I'll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt. - Howard Roark — Ayn Rand
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. — Ayn Rand
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. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun. — Ayn Rand
Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants. — Ayn Rand
If a man wants love he should correct his weaknesses, or his flaws, and he may deserve it. But he cannot expect the unearned, either in love or in money; either in matter or in spirit. — Ayn Rand
It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money. — Ayn Rand
Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot. — Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Quotes About Socialism
There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism - by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide. — Ayn Rand
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 characterologic al traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. — Ayn Rand
Let no man posture as an advocate of peace if he proposes or supports any social system that initiates the use of force against individual men, in any form. — Ayn Rand
The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system - and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny. — Ayn Rand
The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights. — Ayn Rand
It is true that the welfare-statists are not socialists, that they never advocated or intended the socialization of private property, that they want to 'preserve' private property-with government control of its use and disposal. But that is the fundamental characteristic of fascism. — Ayn Rand
Rulers exist entirely through the persons of others. Their goal is in their subjects, in the activity of enslaving. They are as dependent as the beggar, the social worker and the bandit. The form of dependence does not matter. — Ayn Rand
Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. — Ayn Rand
The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life. — Ayn Rand
If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as "social gains", if businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as "selfish greed". — Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Quotes About Objectivism
The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. — Ayn Rand
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. — Ayn Rand
If parasitism, favoritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence. — Ayn Rand
It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust but to know. — Ayn Rand
If you agree with some tenets of Objectivism, but disagree with others, do not call yourself an Objectivist; give proper authorship credit for the parts you agree with — Ayn Rand
Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others. — Ayn Rand
Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history. — Ayn Rand
I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach. — Ayn Rand
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. — Ayn Rand
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. — Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Quotes About Individualism
Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.” An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others. — Ayn Rand
In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions and interests dictate. — Ayn Rand
Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual). — Ayn Rand
A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort ... is not strictly speaking a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang violence. — Ayn Rand
The freedom of speech of private individuals includes the right to not agree, not to listen, and not to finance one's own antagonists. — Ayn Rand
I got the idea [for Anthem's theme] in my school days, in Soviet Russia, when I heard all the vicious attacks on individualism, and asked myself what the world would be like if men lost the word 'I.' — Ayn Rand
America's founding Ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more - and nothing less. — Ayn Rand
And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: 'I. — Ayn Rand
The fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism. — Ayn Rand
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. — Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Quotes About Rights
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. — Ayn Rand
The end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others. — Ayn Rand
The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may only resort to force only against those who start the use of force. — Ayn Rand
I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. — Ayn Rand
Capitalism is our only moral system. All other systems take advantage of man's rights and liberties. — Ayn Rand
Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law. — Ayn Rand
Rights are not a matter of numbers - and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob. — Ayn Rand
Without property rights, no other rights are possible. — Ayn Rand
One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living. — Ayn Rand
The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. — Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Quotes About Force
A businessman cannot force you to buy his product; if he makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences; if he fails, he takes the loss. If bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences; if he fails, he passes the loss on to you. — Ayn Rand
Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. — Ayn Rand
There are only two means by which men can deal with one another: guns or logic. Force or persuasion. Those who know that they cannot win by means of logic, have always resorted to guns. — Ayn Rand
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. — Ayn Rand
When you force a man to act against his own choice and judgment, it's his thinking that you want him to suspend. — Ayn Rand
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. — Ayn Rand
Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives. — Ayn Rand
All the reasons which made the initiation of physical force evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative. — Ayn Rand
Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force? — Ayn Rand
Government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force. — Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Quotes About Values
The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone. — Ayn Rand
It is not advisable to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener. — Ayn Rand
Altruism does not mean mere kindness or generosity, but the sacrifice of the best among men to the worst, the sacrifice of virtues to flaws, of ability to incompetence, of progress to stagnation-and the subordinating of all life and of all values to the claims of anyone's suffering. — Ayn Rand
Do not keep silent when your own ideas and values are being attacked. If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the fault of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell. — Ayn Rand
Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. — Ayn Rand
Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes. — Ayn Rand
The Romanticists predominantly, were enemies of capitalism, which they regarded as a prosaic, materialistic, “petty bourgeois” system — never realizing that it was the only system that could make freedom, individuality and the pursuit of values possible in practice. — Ayn Rand
The cult of moral grayness is a revolt against moral values. — Ayn Rand
Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud. — Ayn Rand
A morality that holds need as a claim, holds emptiness-non-existence-as its standard of value; it rewards an absence, a defect: weakness, inability, incompetence, suffering, disease, disaster, the lack, the fault, the flaw-the zero. — Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Famous Quotes And Sayings
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours. — Ayn Rand
From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind. — Ayn Rand
The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity. — Ayn Rand
I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need. I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others." - Howard Roark — Ayn Rand
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision. — Ayn Rand
America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. — Ayn Rand
Political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries. — Ayn Rand
Do not let your fire go out ... Do not let the Hero in your soul perish ... Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours. — Ayn Rand
I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet. — Ayn Rand
The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendour that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach. — Ayn Rand
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. — Ayn Rand
Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice. — Ayn Rand
To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I.’ The meaning of the ‘I’ is an independent, self-sufficient entity that does not exist for the sake of any other person. A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite. The love of a parasite is worth nothing. — Ayn Rand
When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, "Who is destroying the world?" You are. — Ayn Rand
It's true that there's no such thing as free will. We can't help what we are or what we do. It's not our fault. Nobody's to blame for anything. It's all in your background ... and your glands. If you're good, that's no achievement of yours - you were lucky in your glands. If you're rotten, nobody should punish you - you were unlucky, that's all. — Ayn Rand
If men want to oppose war, it is statism that they must oppose. So long as they hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) alleged “good” can justify it-there can be no peace within a nation and no peace among nations. — Ayn Rand
People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism. — Ayn Rand
Man needs knowledge in order to survive, and only reason can achieve it; men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason, can exist only as parasites on the thinking of others. — Ayn Rand
Lobbying' is the activity of attempting to influence legislation by privately influencing the legislators. It is the result and creation of a mixed economy-of government by pressure groups. Its methods range from mere social courtesies and cocktail-party or luncheon "friendships" to favors, threats, bribes, blackmail. — Ayn Rand
Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good. — Ayn Rand
He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another's personality, marking vulnerable points. — Ayn Rand
I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? — Ayn Rand
"Mediocrity" doesn't mean average intelligence, it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters. — Ayn Rand
If you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty. — Ayn Rand
Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character. — Ayn Rand
I consider promiscuity immoral. Not because sex is evil, but because sex is too good and too important. — Ayn Rand
Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people's savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments. — Ayn Rand
America’s founding ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more-and nothing less. The rest-everything that America achieved, everything she became, everything 'noble and just,' and heroic, and great, and unprecedented in human history-was the logical consequence of fidelity to that one principle. — Ayn Rand
It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master. — Ayn Rand
We are born into this world unarmed - our mind is our only weapon. — Ayn Rand
Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth. — Ayn Rand
The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours. — Ayn Rand
Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone. — Ayn Rand
Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by producing. — Ayn Rand
The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it. — Ayn Rand
Serenity comes from the ability to say “Yes” to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say “No” to the wrong choices made by others. — Ayn Rand
When you have established that one alternative is good and the other is evil, there is no justification for the choice of a mixture. There is no justification ever for choosing any part of what you know to be evil. — Ayn Rand
Creation comes before distribution -- or there will be nothing to distribute. — Ayn Rand
The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology. — Ayn Rand
Since there is no such entity as 'the public,' since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others. — Ayn Rand
The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence. — Ayn Rand
If you surrender everything to the government and give it total power to plan the whole economy, this will not guarantee your economic security, but it will guarantee the descent of the entire nation to a level of miserable poverty--as the practical results of every totalitarian economy, communist or fascist, have demonstrated. — Ayn Rand
A man doesn't borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it. — Ayn Rand
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. — Ayn Rand
In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them. — Ayn Rand
A 'mixed economy' is a society in the process of committing suicide. — Ayn Rand
Life Lessons by Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand teaches that it is important to be independent and think for yourself, and to strive to reach your highest potential.
She also emphasizes the importance of individual rights and the need to stand up for them.
Finally, she encourages us to live our lives with passion and purpose, and to take responsibility for our own happiness.
Citation
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