Ayn Rand Quotes
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Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.
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It is futile to fight against, if one does not know what one is fighting for.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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And this is the whole shabby secret: to some men, the sight of an achievement is a reproach, a reminder that their own lives are irrational, and that there is no loophole - no escape from reason and reality. Their resentment is the cornered Dionysian element baring its teeth.
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What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.
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Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.
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The moral precept to adopt...is: Judge, and be prepared to be judged.
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I hope you will understand my hesitation in writing to one whom I admire as the greatest representative of a philosophy to which I want to dedicate my whole life.
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Today, racism is regarded as a crime if practiced by a majority-but as an inalienable right if practiced by a minority.
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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.
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When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism-with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.
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Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression 'individual rights' is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today’s intellectual chaos). But the expression 'collective rights' is a contradiction in terms.
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It is not good to feel too much joy, nor to be glad that our body lives. For we matter not and it must not matter to us whether we live or die, which is to be as our brothers will it. But we, Equality 7-2521, are glad to be living. If this is a vice, then we wish no virtue.
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This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before...The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of spirit.
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Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.
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Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death.
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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.
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A gun is not an argument.
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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.
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Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday... The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production.
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Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds, I am not a sacrifice on their altars.
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There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.