We are all brothers under the skin – and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.

But this was that view of human destiny which she had most passionately hated and rejected: the view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever...

I am done with the monster of “We,” the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame.And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this...

A right doesn’t include the material implementation of that right by other men;it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one’s own effort.

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

In what act or thought of his has there ever been self? What was his aim in life? Greatness – in other people’s eyes. Fame, admiration, envy – all which come from others. Others dictated...

Haven’t I? – he thought. Haven’t I thought of it since the first time I saw you? Haven’t I thought of nothing else for two years? …He sat motionless, looking at her. He heard the...

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...

Well, I always know what I want. And when you know what you want–you go toward it. Sometimes you go very fast, and sometimes only an inch a year. Perhaps you feel happier when you...

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment …...

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.

When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to...

To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She’s earned it, it’s a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her...

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.

Man’s unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.

It’s easy to run to others. It’s so hard to stand on one’s own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can’t fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest...

We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma...

Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned.His own happiness is man’s only moral purpose, but only his...

Why had we let it go? Why had we both been condemned…to an exile among dreary strangers who had made us give up all desire for rest, for friendship, for the sound of human voices?...

But, in fact, a person’s sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life.

Politically, the goal of today’s dominant trendis statism. Philosophically, the goal is theobliteration of reason;psychologically, it is theerosion of ambition.

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

When unlimited and unrestricted by individual rights a government is men’s deadliest enemy.

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.

She had never done these things before; she did them expertly. She had a capacity for action, a competence that clashed incongruously with her appearance.

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...

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.