I am older than you. Believe me, there is no other way to live on earth. Men are not open to truth or reason. They cannot be reached by a rational argument. The mind is...

Your moral code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice…It demands that he starts, not with a standard of value,...

Do it first and feel about it afterwards.’ – Dagny Taggart

Who are you to want to escape a thug’s bullet? That’s only a personal prejudice!”Men would shudder, he thought, if they saw a mother bird plucking the feathers from the wings of her young, then...

As a basic step of self-esteem, learn to treat as the mark of a cannibal any man’s demand for your help. To demand it is to claim that your life is his property – and...

Their eyes were dark and hard and glowing, with no fear in them, no kindness and no guilt.

There is no such thing as “the right to enslave”.A nation can do it , just as a man can become a criminal – but neither can do it by right. It doesn’t matter in...

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.

She could not descend to an existence where her brain would explode under the pressure of forcing itself not to outdistance incompetence. She could not function to the rule of: Pipe down-keep down-slow down-don’t do...

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

People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been–for a moment’s relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been...

When men reject reason, they have no means left for dealing with one another — except brute, physical force.

And because she worshipped joy, Kira seldom laughed and did not go to see comedies in theaters. And because she felt a profound rebellion against the weighty, the tragic, the solemn, Kira had a solemn...

Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.

Sacrifice is the surrender of that which you value in favor of which you dont

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 –...

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

This is pity,” he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.

She smiled. She knew she was dying. But it did not matter any longer. She had known something which no human words could ever tell and she knew it now. She had been awaiting it...

An inventor is a man who asks ‘Why?’ of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.

And suddenly that we were laughing out loud, laughing as if there were no power left in us save laughter.

And that is why I consider promiscuity immoral. Not because sex is evil, but because sex is too good and too important… What sex should involve is a very serious relationship. Whether that relationship should...

She’s a writer. The kind of writer who wouldn’t be published outside. She believes that when one deals with words, one deals with the mind.

While a creator does and must worship Man (which means his own highest potentiality; which is his natural self-reverence), he must not make the mistake of thinking that this means the necessity to worship Mankind...

Why yes, I can,’ said Midas Mulligan, when he was asked whether he could name a person more evil than the man with a heart closed to pity. ‘The man who uses another’s pity for...

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.

To irrational principles, one cannot be loyal. Ideas that are not derived from reality cannot be consistently practiced in reality.–as quoted by Leonard Peikoff in “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

He stepped to the window and pointed to the skyscrapers of the city. He said that we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when we would see the lights of New York...

I think that when in doubt about the truth of an issue, it’s safer and in better taste to select the least numerous of the adversaries.

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...

I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the...

Of course I need you. I go insane when I see you. You can do almost anything you wish with me. Is that what you want to hear? Almost, Dominique. And the things you couldn’t...

The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now...

I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I...

Upper classes are a nation’s past; the middle class is its future.

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

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

I want you, Hank. I’m much more of an animal than you think. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you – and the only thing I’m ashamed of is that I did...

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...

Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy—a joy...

To be free, a man must be free from his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.

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...

There’s no way to rule innocent men. 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...

Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious

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

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

You will follow me, if we are what we are, you and I, if we live, if the world exists, if you know the meaning of this moment and can’t let it slip by, as...

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.

The view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve, my life and my values could not bring me to...