Quotes from Ayn Rand

Good God, Dagny! Do you expect me to be afraid of an object like James?

You need no proof, no reasons, no success, you need not achieve in fact the good of others—all you need to know is that your motive was the good of others, not your own. Your only definition of the good is a negation: the good is the 'non-good for me.

Your own conscience, conveniently personified in the body of another person and attending to your concern for the less fortunate of this world, thus leaving you free not to attend to it.

I fear for your future, Kira,' said Victor. 'It's time to get reconciled to life. You won't get far with those ideas of yours.' 'That,' said Kira, 'depends on what direction I want to go.

Quieres saber qué está mal en el mundo? Todos los desastres que han asolado al mundo provinieron del intento de los líderes de ignorar el hecho de que A es A.

The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain.

La felicidad es un estado de alegría no contradictoria, una alegría sin pena ni culpa, una alegría que no choca con ninguno de tus valores y que no te lleva a tu propia destrucción; no es la alegría de escapar de tu mente, sino la de usar su poder total; no es la alegría de disimular la realidad, sino la de alcanzar valores reales; no es la alegría de un borracho, sino la de un productor.

Je ne considère pas les collectivistes comme des « idéalistes sincères mais abusés ». La suggestion de réduire en esclavage certains hommes pour le bien d'autres n'est pas un idéal ; la brutalité n'est pas « idéaliste », peu importe son but.

I thought of the men who claim that wealth is a matter of natural resources—and of the men who claim that wealth is a matter of seizing the factories—and of the men who claim that machines condition their brains. Well, there was the motor to condition them, and there it remained as just exactly what it is without man's mind—as a pile of metal scraps and wires, going to rust.

To say that that which was true in the 17th century cannot possibly be true today, because we travel in jet planes while they traveled in horse carts—is like saying that modern men do not need food, as men did in the past, because they are wearing trenchcoats and slacks, instead-of powdered wigs and hoop skirts.

Love is our response to our highest values. The noblest love is born out of admiration of another's values.

people who listen and don't give a damn, but sit there in order to tell their friends that they have attended a lecture by a famous name. All second-handers.

He was seeing the full extent of her failure—in the immensity of his own indifference. The droning stream of her insults was like the sound of a distant riveting machine, a long, impotent pressure that reached nothing within him.

But why?" "You goddamn fool, do you think I consider their question debatable?

I went out to become a flame-spotter. I made it my job to watch for those bright flares in the growing night of savagery, which were the men of ability, the men of the mind—to watch their course, their struggle and their agony—and to pull them out, when I knew that they had seen enough.

There is only one helpful suggestion that I can give you: By the essence and nature of existence, contradictions cannot exist. If you find it inconceivable that an invention of genius should be abandoned among ruins, and that a philosopher should wish to work as a cook in a diner—check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

If the universities—the supposed citadels of reason, knowledge, scholarship, civilization—can be made to surrender to the rule of brute force, the rest of the country is cooked.

will, when he gets here. But, boy!—I'd work for him as a cinder sweeper. He'd blast through this valley like a rocket. He'd triple everybody's production." "Who's that?" "Hank Rearden.

No, you do not have to live; it is your basic act of choice; but if you choose to live, you must live as a man—by the work and the judgment of your mind.

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.

He visto mucho en esta vida -dijo de buen humor-. Y los casados no se miran uno a otro como si estuvieran pensando siempre en el dormitorio. En este mundo o se es virtuoso o se goza. Pero no las dos cosas a un tiempo; No las dos cosas.

What kind of 'changing world', Alvah? Changing to what? From what? Who's doing the changing?

The moral justification of capitalism is man's right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; it is the recognition that man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others, not a sacrificial animal serving anyone's need.

the dark, cluttered, polished mahogany splendor of the Sanborns' Victorian drawing room. Mr. Sanborn wavered. Roark asked, his arm sweeping out at the room around them: "Is this