Quotes About Individualism

But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself.

Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.

Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.

But I don't think of you. (Howard Roark)

Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building that way , when and if you are an architect?" "Yes." "My dear fellow, who will let you?" "That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.

Toohey: Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us. Roark: But I don't think of you.

I am. I think. I will.

A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue.

In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them.

Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

A rational man never distorts or corrupts his own standards and judgment in order to appeal to the irrationality, stupidity, or dishonesty of others.

I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need. I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others. - Howard Roark

Because, you see, God—whatever anyone chooses to call God—is one's highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it.

I think. I am. I will.

A man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress.

I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breathe air. I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival. I've given you, not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need. This is the only way I can want you to love me.

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.

Know what you want in life and go after it. I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals, and I loathe humanity, for its failure to live up to these possibilities.

every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing, but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he'll rise.

Now look at me! Take a good look! I was born and I knew I was alive and I knew what I wanted. What do you think is alive in me? Why do you think I'm alive? Because I have a stomach and eat and digest the food? Because I breathe and work and produce more food to digest? Or because I know what I want, and that something which knows how to want—isn't that life itself? And who—in this damned universe—who can tell me why I should live for anything but for that which I want?

The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life.

We are born into this world unarmed - our mind is our only weapon.