Ayn Rand Quotes

Observe how many people evade, rationalize and drive their minds into a state of blind stupor, in dread of discovering that those they deal with- their loved ones or friends or business associates or political rulers- are not merely mistaken, but evil. Observe that this dread leads them to sanction, to help and to spread the very evil whose existence they fear to acknowledge.

~ Ayn Rand

I'm not asking you to do your best. I'm asking you to do your job. -Dagny Taggart

~ Ayn Rand

There was still one response, the greatest, that she had missed. She thought: To find a feeling that would hold, as their sum, as their final expression, the purpose of all the things she loved on earth... To find a consciousness like her own, who would be the meaning of her world, as she would be of his... No, not Francisco d'Anconia, not Hank Rearden, not any man she had ever met or admired... A man who existed only in her knowledge of her capacity for an emotion she had never felt, but would have given her life to experience.

~ Ayn Rand

If I found a job, a project, an idea or a person I wanted-I'd have to depend on the whole world. Everything has strings leading to everything else. We're all so tied together. We're all in a net, the net is waiting and it's precious to you. Do you know who is standing ready to tear it out of your hands? You can't know, it may be so involved and so far away, but someone is ready, and you're afraid of them all. And you cringe and you crawl and you beg and you accept them-just so they'll let you keep it. And look at whom you come to accept.

~ Ayn Rand

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 others let it slip, into the senselessness of the unwilled and unreached.

~ Ayn Rand

You are so lost to your higher self that you would resent me for my achievements, rather than celebrate them with me, sexually?

~ Ayn Rand

Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves.

~ Ayn Rand

A young woman stood before the railing, speaking to the reception clerk. Her slender body seemed out of all scale in relation to a normal human body; its lines were so long, so fragile, so exaggerated that she looked like a stylized drawing of a woman and made the correct proportions of a normal being appear heavy and awkward beside her. She wore a plain gray suit; the contrast between its tailored severity and her appearance was deliberately exorbitant—and strangely elegant.She let the finger tips of one hand rest on the railing, a narrow hand ending the straight imperious line of her arm. She had gray eyes that were not ovals, but two long, rectangular cuts edged by parallel lines of lashes; she had an air of cold serenity and an exquisitely vicious mouth. Her face, her pale gold hair, her suit seemed to have no color, but only a hint, just on the verge of the reality of color, making the full reality seem vulgar. Keating stood still, because he understood for the first time what it was that artists spoke about when they spoke of beauty.

~ Ayn Rand

...Is it an inspiring sight to see a man commit a heroic gesture, and then learn that he goes to vaudeville shows for relaxation? Or see a man who’s painted a magnificent canvas—and learn that he spends his time sleeping with every slut he meets?”“What do you want? Perfection?”“—or nothing. So, you see, I take the nothing.

~ Ayn Rand

His face was like a law of nature—a thing one could not question, alter or implore. It had high cheekbones over gaunt, hollow cheeks; gray eyes, cold and steady; a contemptuous mouth, shut tight, the mouth of an executioner or a saint.

~ Ayn Rand

She saw the faces streaming past her, the faces made alike by fear—fear as a common denominator, fear of themselves, fear of all and of one another, fear making them ready to pounce upon whatever was held sacred by any single one they met... She had kept herself clean and free in a single passion—to touch nothing. She had liked facing them in the streets, she had liked the impotence of their hatred, because she offered them nothing to be hurt.

~ Ayn Rand

She saw the faces streaming past her, the faces made alike by fear—fear as a common denominator, fear of themselves, fear of all and of one another, fear making them ready to pounce upon whatever was held sacred by any single one they met...She had kept herself clean and free in a single passion—to touch nothing. She had liked facing them in the streets, she had liked the impotence of their hatred, because she offered them nothing to be hurt.

~ Ayn Rand

As she looked at him, her dark gray eyes went slowly from astonishment to stillness, then to a strange expression that resembled a look of weariness, except that it seemed to reflect much more than the endurance of this one moment.

~ Ayn Rand

He tried to explain and to convince. He knew, while he spoke, that it was useless, because his words sounded as if they were hitting a vacuum. There was no such person as Mrs. Wayne Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the opinions of her friends, the picture postcards she had seen, the novels of country squires she had read; it was this that he had to address, this immateriality which could not hear him or answer, deaf and impersonal like a wad of cotton.

~ Ayn Rand

The pursuit of truth is not important. The pursuit of that truth is important which helps you in reaching your goal that is provided you have one.

~ Ayn Rand

He was sixty years old, his backbone had been as straight as his gun, his spirit-as straight as his backbone.

~ Ayn Rand

...she stood beside him, sagging in his arms, abandoning herself to anything he wished, in open acknowledgment of his power to reduce her to helplessness by the pleasure he had the power to give her.

~ Ayn Rand

Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you? He answered, Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one.

~ Ayn Rand

The unrecognized genius—that’s an old story. Have you ever thought of a much worse one—the genius recognized too well? ... That a great many men are poor fools who can’t see the best—that’s nothing. One can’t get angry at that. But do you understand about the men who see it and don’t want it?

~ Ayn Rand

I have yet to see a genius or a hero who, if stuck with a burning match, would feel less pain than his undistinguished average brother.

~ Ayn Rand

The unrecognized genius-that's one old story. Have you ever thought of a much worse one-the genius recognized too well?

~ Ayn Rand

It [ballet] projects a fragile kind of strength and a certain inflexible precision.

~ Ayn Rand

It [ballet] is a perfect medium for the expression of spiritual love.

~ Ayn Rand

A gracefully effortless floating, flowing and flying are the essentials of the ballet’s image of man.

~ Ayn Rand

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 judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence--such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.

~ Ayn Rand

Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one’s consciousness can permit the faking of existence.

~ Ayn Rand

Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. 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. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence.

~ Ayn Rand

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.

~ Ayn Rand

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

~ Ayn Rand

You can fake virtue for an audience. You can’t fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running.

~ Ayn Rand

What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are the egotists. You don’t think through another’s brain and you don’t work through another’s hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life.

~ Ayn Rand

If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? . . . Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability.

~ Ayn Rand

[Howard Roark] was asked for a statement, and he received a group of reporters in his office. He spoke without anger. He said:'I can't tell anyone anything about my building. If I prepared a hash of words to stuff into other people's brains, it would be an insult to them and to me. But I am glad you came here. I do have something to say. I want to ask every man who is interested in this to go and see the building, to look at it and then to use words of his own mind, if he cares to speak.'The Banner printed the interview as follows:'Mr. Roark, who seems to be a publicity hound, received reporters with an air of swaggering insolence and stated that the public mind was hash. He did not choose to talk, but seemed well aware of the advertising angles of the situation. All he cared about, he explained, was to have his building seen by as many people as possible.

~ Ayn Rand

He saw the article...which was not an expression of ideas, but a bucket of slime emptied in public—an article that did not contain a single fact, not even an invented one, but poured a stream of sneers and adjectives in which nothing was clear except the filthy malice of denouncing without considering proof necessary.

~ Ayn Rand

...What kind of a tragedy did you have in your childhood?Why, none at all. I had a wonderful childhood. Free and peaceful and not bothered too much by anybody. Well, yes, I did feel bored very often. But I’m used to that.

~ Ayn Rand

...he had never known fear because, against any disaster, he had held the omnipotent cure of being able to act.

~ Ayn Rand

The audience looked at him. They felt he had no chance. They could drop the nameless resentment, the sense of insecurity which he aroused in most people. And so, for the first time, they could see him as he was: a man totally innocent of fear.

~ Ayn Rand

He saw for the first time that he had never known fear because, against any disaster, he had held the omnipotent cure of being able to act.

~ Ayn Rand

...he had acquired the conviction that one had to concern oneself with the rational, not the insane—that one had to seek that which was right, because the right answer always won—that the senseless, the wrong, the monstrously unjust could not work, could not succeed, could do nothing but defeat itself.

~ Ayn Rand

Throughout his life, whenever he became convinced that a course of action was right, the desire to follow it had come automatically.

~ Ayn Rand