Quotes from Ayn Rand

Si algunos hombres eligen no pensar o no trabajar, sólo pueden sobrevivir (temporalmente) saqueando los bienes producidos por otros; pero esos otros tuvieron que producirlos, o nadie habría sobrevivido.

Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important--what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right--so long as it's not yourself?

Oh, I don't think he approves of marriage. Not that he preaches anything immoral, but he's always told me marriage is old-fashioned, an economic device to perpetuate the institution of private property, or something like that or anyway that he doesn't like it.

Trato con los hombres como lo requiere mi naturaleza y la de ellos: por medio de la razón. No busco ni deseo nada de ellos, excepto aquellas relaciones que ellos quieren iniciar por su propia y voluntaria elección.

Lo que uno siente hacia los muertos, pensó, se basa siempre en la imposibilidad de toda acción.

Just as religion has preempted the field of ethics, turning morality against man, so it has usurped the highest moral concepts of our language, placing them outside this earth and beyond man's reach.

Do you expect me to forget what you are?" he asked, knowing that this was what he had forgotten. "I do not expect you to think of me at all.

To be able to say I love you, one has to be able to say I

they have taught man that he is a hopeless misfit made of two elements, both symbols of death. A body without a soul is a corpse, a soul without a body is a ghost— yet search is there image of man's nature: the battleground of a struggle between a corpse and a ghost a corpse endowed with some evil volition of its own and a ghost endowed with the knowledge that everything known to man is non-existent, that only the unknowable exists.

Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Don't ignore your own desires... Don't sacrifice them. Examine their cause.

You can avoid reality but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.

She caught herself thinking: She's functioning well in an emergency, I'll be all right with her—and realized that she was thinking of herself.

Puesto que el conocimiento, el pensamiento y la acción racional son propiedades del individuo, y puesto que la elección de ejercer o no su facultad racional depende de él, la supervivencia del hombre requiere que quienes piensan no sufran las injerencias de quienes no piensan.

enormes titulares, sus imágenes explícitas y sus textos excesivamente simplificados noqueaban los sentidos y entraban en la consciencia de las personas sin necesidad del proceso intermedio de la razón, como si la comida fuese disparada al recto sin tener que pasar por la digestión.

There were moments when she felt a sudden, violent longing for him, but it was only impatience, not pain.

What if you're placing your virtue in the service of evil and letting it become a tool for the destruction of everything you love, respect and admire?

Puesto que los hombres no son ni omniscientes ni infalibles, deben ser libres para estar de acuerdo o en desacuerdo, para cooperar o para seguir su propio camino independiente, cada uno según su propio juicio racional. La libertad es el requisito fundamental de la mente del hombre.

Questions give us no rest.

Money inside a man's pocket has the power to turn into confidence inside his mind.

economic strength to make a start. How do you expect

She liked his face—its lines were tight and firm, it did not have that look of loose muscles evading the responsibility of a shape, which she had learned to expect in people's faces.

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.

This was not the time for his old doubts. He felt that he could forgive anything to anyone, because happiness was the greatest agent of purification. He felt certain that every living being wished him well tonight

The man-worshipers, in my sense of the term, are those who see man's highest potential and strive to actualize it. The man-haters are those who regard man as a helpless, depraved, contemptible creature--and struggle never to let him discover otherwise. It is important here to remember that the only direct, introspective knowledge of man anyone possesses is of himself.