Quotes from Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Great men can't be ruled... The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional.

Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. Happy men are free men.

Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.

I take the only desire one can really permit oneself. Freedom, Alvah, freedom.""You call that freedom?""To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.

A desire to choose the hardest might be a confession of weakness in itself.

What is kinder--to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility beyond their endurance--or to see them as they are, and accept it because it makes them comfortable?

But, you see, it's not what you do that matters really. It's only you.""Me what?""Just you here. Or you in the city. Or you somewhere in the world. I don't know. Just that.

A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack

To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?

The age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a prelude to the age of the cave.

He wanted to put his head down on the desk, lie still and rest, only the form of rest he needed did not exist, greater than sleep, greater than death, the rest of having never lived.

They say the heart of the earth is made of fire. It is held imprisoned and silent. But at times it breaks through the clay, the iron, the granite, and shoots out to freedom. Then it becomes a thing like this.

Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with one and that that one paid for his courage.

I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you...Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference

I love doing it. Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.

She found a dark satisfaction in pain—because that pain came from him.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.

Men hate passion, any great passion. Henry Cameron made a mistake : he loved his work. That was why he fought. That was why he lost.

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

...the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards.

It's a law of survival, isn't it?—to seek the best. I didn't come for your sake. I came for mine.

Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.