Ayn Rand Quotes

It was a hymn with the force of a march, a march with the majesty of a hymn. It was the song of soldiers bearing sacred banners and of priests carrying swords. It was an anthem to the sanctity of strength.

~ Ayn Rand

The things you were talking about. The lights and the flowers. Do they expect those things to make them romantic, not the other way around?”“Darling, what do you mean?”“There wasn’t a person there who enjoyed it,” she said, her voice lifeless, “or who thought or felt anything at all. They moved about, and they said the same dull things they say anywhere. I suppose they thought the lights would make it brilliant.”“Darling, you take everything too seriously. One is not supposed to be intellectual at a ball. One is simply supposed to be gay.”“How? By being stupid?

~ Ayn Rand

Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.

~ Ayn Rand

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

~ Ayn Rand

They say that it’s hard for men to agree. You’d be surprised how easy it is—when both parties hold as their moral absolute that neither exists for the sake of the other and that reason is their only means of trade.

~ Ayn Rand

I win by means of nothing but logic and I surrender to nothing but logic. I do not surrender my reason or deal with men who surrender theirs.

~ Ayn Rand

People said it because other people said it. They did not know why it was being said and heard everywhere. They did not give or ask for reasons. 'Reason,' Dr. Pritchett had told them, 'is the most naive of all superstitions.' 'The source of public opinion?' said Claude Slagenhop in a public radio speech. 'There is no source of public opinion. It is spontaneously general. It is a reflex of the collective instinct of the collective mind.

~ Ayn Rand

Thought—he told himself quietly—is a weapon one uses in order to act. No action was possible. Thought is the tool by which one makes a choice. No choice was left to him. Thought sets one’s purpose and the way to reach it. In the matter of his life being torn piece by piece out of him, he was to have no voice, no purpose, no way, no defense.

~ Ayn Rand

And, after all, you’ve got to live.”“Not that way,” said Roark.

~ Ayn Rand

In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

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

~ Ayn Rand

Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person.

~ Ayn Rand

The practical implementation of friendship, affection and love consists of incorporating the welfare (the rational welfare) of the person involved into one’s own hierarchy of values, then acting accordingly.

~ Ayn Rand

When you are in love, it means that the person you love is of great personal, selfish importance to you and to your life.

~ Ayn Rand

You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty.

~ Ayn Rand

I don't want to see you. I don't like you. I don't like your face. You look like an insufferable egotist. You're impertinent. You're too sure of yourself. Twenty years ago I would have punched your face with the greatest of pleasure.

~ Ayn Rand

Your ego is your strictest judge.

~ Ayn Rand

The egotist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not function through them. He is not concerned with them in any primary matter. Not in his aim, not in his motive, not in his thinking, not in his desires, not in the source of his energy. He does not exist for any other man—and he asks no other man to exist for him.

~ Ayn Rand

I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your prime concern within other men. I’ve always demanded a certain quality in the people I liked. I’ve always recognized it at once—and it’s the only quality I respect in men. I chose my friends by that...A self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters.

~ Ayn Rand

All that which proceeds from man’s independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man’s dependence upon men is evil.

~ Ayn Rand

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.

~ Ayn Rand

Great men can’t be ruled... The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional.

~ Ayn Rand

Let’s stop and think for a moment. Is sacrifice a virtue? Can a man sacrifice his integrity? His honor? His freedom? His ideal? His convictions? The honesty of his feeling? The independence of his thought?

~ Ayn Rand

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 for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake - and that is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity and your invaluable self-esteem.

~ Ayn Rand

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

~ Ayn Rand

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

~ Ayn Rand

...there was no guilt in his face, no doubt, nothing but the calm of an inviolate self-confidence.

~ Ayn Rand

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 him as a weapon.

~ Ayn Rand

For this wire is as a part of our body, as a vein torn from us, glowing with our blood. Are we proud of this thread of metal, or of our hands which made it, or is there a line to divide these two?

~ Ayn Rand

We have lied to ourselves. We have not built this box for the good of our brothers. We built it for its own sake. It is above all our brothers to us, and its truth above their truth.

~ Ayn Rand

The respectable family that supports worthless relatives or covers up their crimes in order to protect the family name(as if the moral stature of one man could be damaged by the actions of another)-the bum who boasts that his great-grandfather was an empire-builder, or the small-town spinster who boasts that her maternal great-uncle was a state senator and her third cousin gave a concert at carnegie hall (as if the achievement of one man could rub off on the mediocrity of another)-the parents who search geneological trees in order to evaluate their prospective son-in-law.-the celebrity who starts his autobiography with a detailed account of his family history -All these are samples of racism.

~ Ayn Rand

Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.

~ Ayn Rand

The question of whether one alleges the Superiority or Inferiority of any given race is irrelevant, racism has only one psychological root: the racist's sense of his own Inferiority.

~ Ayn Rand

The ' pleasure' of being drunk is obviously the pleasure of escaping from the responsibility of Consciousness.

~ Ayn Rand

It was a satisfying bravery, it never aroused antagonism.

~ Ayn Rand

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 your best, it is not wanted!

~ Ayn Rand

The only thing that counts in life is solid, material assets. It's no time for theories when everything is falling to pieces around us.

~ Ayn Rand

There might be some sort of justification for the savage societies in which a man had to expect that enemies could murder him at any moment and had to defend himself as best as he could. But there can be no justification for a society in which a man is expected to manufacture the weapons for his own murderers.

~ Ayn Rand

Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.

~ Ayn Rand

When facing society, the man most concerned, the man who is to do the most and contribute the oat, has the least say. It's taken for granted that he has no voice and the reasons he could offer are rejected in advance as prejudiced -- since no speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgement on a man than on an idea. Though how in the hell one passes judgement on a man without considering the content of his brain is more than I'll ever understand.

~ Ayn Rand