Quotes from Ayn Rand

Verá, doctor Stadler; a la gente no le gusta pensar, y cuanto mayores son sus conflictos, menos piensa. Pero gracias a cierto instinto, sabe que ha de hacerlo y ello produce una sensación de culpabilidad. Por tal motivo, bendecirá y seguirá a quienquiera que le ofrezca una justificación para no pensar. Alguien que convierta en virtud de gran altura intelectual lo que saben que es su pecado, su debilidad y su miseria.

dejad al caníbal que gruñe que la libertad de la mente humana fue necesaria para crear una civilización industrial, pero no para mantenerla...

There is no such thing as a temporary suicide.

In any event he had to sleep in the tube that night

Now you see, Dr. Stadler, how unfortunate it is if you allow yourself to be disturbed by political matters, which you have always considered unworthy of your attention and knowledge. You see, it is not Mr. Mouch's function to ask permissions.

Nada puede hacer que sea moral destruir a los mejores. Uno no puede ser castigado por ser bueno.

It was not the businessmen or the industrialists or the workers or the labor unions or the remnants of the feudal aristocracy that began the revolt against freedom and the demand for the return of the absolute state: it was the intellectuals. It was the alleged guardians of reason who brought mankind back to the rule of brute force.

es imposible que la gente viva sin quebrantar alguna ley.

I like cigarettes, Miss Taggart. I like to think of fire held in a man's hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind—and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression.

wondering how one went about forcing one's mind into blankness, particularly after a lifetime lived on the axiom that the constant, clearest, most ruthless function of his rational faculty was his foremost duty.

You'll get everything society can give a man. You'll keep all the money. You'll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You'll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I—I'll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt.

The irrational is the impossible; it is that which contradicts the facts of reality; facts cannot be altered by a wish, but they can destroy the wisher. If a man desires and pursues contradictions–if he wants to have his cake and eat it, too–he disintegrates his consciousness; he turns his inner life into civil war of blind forces engaged in dark, incoherent, pointless, meaningless conflicts.

A free mind and a free economy are corollaries. One can't exist without the other. The dollar sign, as the symbol of the currency of a free country, is the symbol of the free mind.

Free scientific inquiry? The first adjective is redundant.

Lo que llamáis vuestra alma o espíritu es vuestra conciencia y lo que llamáis libre voluntad es la voluntad de vuestra mente para pensar o no, la única que poseéis, vuestra única libertad, la opción que controla todas las opciones realizadas por vosotros y determina vuestra vida y vuestro carácter.

A world with its motor cut off and a single heart, pumped by hand.

And that, in effect, is what he is actually doing; consciously or subconsciously, intentionally or inadvertently, when a man declares: "There are no blacks and whites," he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: "I am unwilling to be wholly good—and please don't regard me as wholly evil!

Simpler, Peter, simpler, more direct, as honest as you can make of a dishonest thing.

the only sin on earth was to do things badly.

Dr. Simon Pritchett. He was declaring that the new invention was an instrument of social welfare, which guaranteed general prosperity, and that anyone who doubted this self-evident fact was an enemy of society, to be treated accordingly.

Reason is not automatic. Those that deny it cannot be conquered by it.

more contemptible than a criminal, is the employer who rejects men for being too good.

We all have a sort of vague, glowing picture when we say that, something solemn, big and important. But actually all we know of it is the people we meet in our lifetime.

And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.