Quotes from Ayn Rand

But if my love of truth is left as my only possession, then the greater the loss behind me, the greater the pride I may take in the price I have paid for that love. Then the wreckage will not become a funeral mount above me, but will serve as a height I have climbed to attain a wider field of vision.

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.

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.

The fundamental evil of government grants is the fact that men are forced to pay for the support of ideas diametrically opposed to their own. This is a profound violation of an individual's integrity and conscience.

Keating stood still, because he understood for the first time what it was that artists spoke about when they spoke of beauty.

now, be happy. But I'm not. I feel nothing. When I 'm honest with myself, I know that the only emotion I've felt in years is being tired. Not physically tired. Just tired. It's as if…as if there were nobody there to feel any more. But that's not all. There's something much worse. It's doing something horrible to me. I'm beginning to hate people…

There is only one power that determines the course of history, just as it determines the course of every individual life: the power of man's rational faculty—the power of ideas.

Today, intelligence is neither recognized nor rewarded, but is being systematically extinguished in a growing flood of brazenly flaunted irrationality.

Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.

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.

Well, whose opinion did you take?" "I don't ask for opinions." "What do you go by?" "Judgment." "Well, whose judgment did you take?" "Mine." "But whom did you consult about it?" "Nobody.

By special permit, exceptions were granted—on the grounds of "essential need"—to a few of the larger business enterprises and the more fashionable hotels.

This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.

You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection. You have fought for it, you have dreamed of it, and you have wished it, and I-I am the man who has granted you your wish. John Galt's Speech

To say I love you one must first be able to say the I

Nothing can make self-immolation proper. Nothing can give them the right to turn men into sacrificial animals. Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability. If that is right, then we'd better start slaughtering one another, because there isn't any right at all in the world!

And no one rose to ask the question: Good?-by what standard? John Galt

What subjectivism is in the realm of ethics, collectivism is in the realm of politics. Just as the notion that anything I do is right because I chose to do it, is not a moral principle, but a negation of morality--so the notion that anything society does is right because society chose to do it, is not a moral principle, but a negation of moral principles an the banishment of morality from social issues.

But we, Equality 7-2521, are glad to be living. If this is a vice, then we wish no virtue.

We are the guardians of a great human function. Perhaps of the greatest function among the endeavors of man. We have achieved much and we have erred often. But we are willing in all humility to make way for our heirs. We are only men and we are only seekers. But we seek for truth with the best there is in our hearts. We seek with what there is of the sublime granted to the race of men. It is a great quest.

The theory that holds good blood or bad blood as a moral-intellectual criterion , can lead to nothing but torrents of blood in practice.

What are you really seeking?' 'Freedom – to want nothing, to expect nothing, to depend on nothing.

He thought--while his hand moved rapidly--what a power there was in words; later, for those who heard them, but first for the one who found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier.

When I die, I hope to go to heaven-- whatever the hell that is-- and I want to be able to afford the price of admission, Virtue is the price of admission. Jim said haughtily. That's what I mean, James. So I want to be prepared to claim the greatest virtue of all-- that I was a man who made money. Any grafter can make money. James, you ought to discover some day that words have an exact meaning.