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Atlas Shrugged Quotes

Atlas Shrugged quote from classy quote

Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Achievement Admiration Atlas Shrugged Inspirational Love Objectivism

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 calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand Galt Objectivism Philosophy Taggart

Do you know what she did today? He leaned confidentially across the table, pointing at the dishes in the sink. She went to the market and left all the breakfast dishes there and said she'd do them later. I know what she wanted. She expected me to do them. Well, I'll fool her. I'll leave them just where they are.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Dishes Humour

It was the smile of a man who is able to see, to know and to create the glory of existence. It was the mocking, challenging smile of a brilliant intelligence.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Intelligence Smile

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking—that the mind is one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide of action—that reason is an absolute that permits no compromise—that a concession to the irrational invalidates one’s consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality—that the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind—that the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one’s consciousness.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good Happiness John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Pain Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it—that no substitute can do your thinking—that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good Happiness Independence John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Pain Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

No, you do not have to live as a man; it is an act of moral choice. But you cannot live as anything else—and the alternative is that state of living death which you now see within you and around you, the state of a thing unfit for existence, no longer human and less than animal, a thing that knows nothing but pain and drags itself through its span of years in the agony of unthinking self-destruction.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good Happiness John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Pain Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

It’s not that I don’t suffer, it’s that I know the unimportance of suffering, I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one’s soul and as a permanent scar across one’s view of existence.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged John Galt Pain Suffering

She survived it. She was able to survive it, because she did not believe in suffering. She faced with astonished indignation the ugly fact of feeling pain, and refused to let it matter. Suffering was a senseless accident, it was not part of life as she saw it.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Dagny Taggart Pain Suffering

They scattered with no melody, no harmony, no rhythm to hold them. If music was emotion and emotion came from thought, then this was the scream of chaos, of the irrational, of the helpless, of man’s self-abdication.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Music

Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment - on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict ‘It is.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

A rational process is a moral process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest - but if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

A process of reason is a process of constant choice in answer to the question: True or False? - Right or Wrong?

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say ‘It is,’ you are refusing to say ‘I am.’ By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: ‘Who am I to know?’- he is declaring: ‘Who am I to live?

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call ‘free will’ is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Character Consciousness Evil Free Will Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot exist. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking, to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Contradiction John Galt Life Logic Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reality Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders’ attempt to evade the fact that A is A. All the secret evil you dread to face within you and all the pain you have ever endured, came from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

Reality is that which exists; the unreal does not exist; the unreal is merely that negation of existence which is the content of a human consciousness when it attempts to abandon reason. Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man’s only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reality Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

Logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Existence John Galt Life Logic Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Consciousness Existence John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. A morality that dares to tell you to find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness—to value the failure of your values—is an insolent negation of morality.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good Happiness John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Values Virtue

Sweep aside those hatred-eaten mystics, who pose as friends of humanity and preach that the highest virtue man can practice is to hold his own life as of no value. Do they tell you that the purpose of morality is to curb man’s instinct of self-preservation? It is for the purpose of self-preservation that man needs a code of morality. The only man who desires to be moral is the man who desires to live.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Self Preservation Think Thinking Values Virtue

Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive in any random manner, but will perish unless he lives as his nature requires, so he is free to seek his happiness in any mindless fraud, but the torture of frustration is all he will find, unless he seeks the happiness proper to man. The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good Happiness John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Values Virtue

Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason is his only means to gain it. Reason is the faculty that perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by his senses. The task of his senses is to give him the evidence of existence, but the task of identifying it belongs to his reason, his senses tell him only that something is, but what it is must be learned by his mind.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Existence John Galt Knowledge Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it. It is only with your own knowledge that you can deal. It is only your own knowledge that you can claim to possess or ask others to consider. Your mind is your only judge of truth—and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal. Nothing but a man’s mind can perform that complex, delicate, crucial process of identification which is thinking. Nothing can direct the process but his own judgment. Nothing can direct his judgment but his moral integrity.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Integrity John Galt Judgment Knowledge Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reality Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two—existence and consciousness—are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Consciousness Evil Existence Good Happiness John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it. A being who does not hold his own life as the motive and goal of his actions, is acting on the motive and standard of death.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Values Virtue

To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Existence Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Truth Values Virtue Wisdom

By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man—every man—is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good Happiness John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Values Virtue

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice — and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man — by choice; he has to hold his life as a value — by choice; he has to learn to sustain it — by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues — by choice.A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Choice Evil Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Values Virtue

Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies...It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of 'Value’ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Reason Think Thinking Values Virtue

To think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call ‘human nature,’ the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Reason Think Values

A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course of behavior. He needs a code of values to guide his actions. ‘Value’ is that which one acts to gain and keep, 'virtue’ is the action by which one gains and keeps it. ‘Value’ presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? 'Value’ presupposes a standard, a purpose and the necessity of action in the face of an alternative. Where there are no alternatives, no values are possible.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Reason Think Thinking Values Virtue

The anti-mind is the anti-life.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Values

Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires...Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Choice Evil Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Reason Think Thinking Values Virtue

Man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child’s education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Hank Rearden Mind

Man’s life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless brute, of a looting thug or a mooching mystic, but the life of a thinking being—not life by means of force or fraud, but life by means of achievement—not survival at any price, since there’s only one price that pays for man’s survival: reason.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Evil Good John Galt Life Man Mind Morality Morals Objectivism Philosophy Pursuit Of Happiness Rational Reason Think Thinking Values Virtue
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