Quotes About Individualism

Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through. And man will go on. Man, not men.

Así como no mantengo mi vida mediante el robo o la limosna, sino mediante mi propio esfuerzo, tampoco busco obtener mi felicidad por el daño o el favor de otros, sino por mis propios logros.

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.

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.

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.

I made my money by my own effort, in free exchange and through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with—the voluntary consent of those who employed me when I started, the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who buy my product.

Una mente racional no trabaja bajo coerción; no subordina su comprensión de la realidad a las órdenes, las directivas o los controles de nadie; no sacrifica su conocimiento, su visión de la verdad, a las opiniones, las amenazas, los deseos, los planes o el «bienestar» de nadie.

No importa que sólo unos pocos en cada generación comprendan y logren la realidad completa de la adecuada estatura humana y que el resto la traicione. Son esos pocos los que mueven al mundo y le dan su sentido a la vida, y son esos pocos a quienes siempre aspiré a dirigirme. El resto no me interesa; no es a mí o a El manantial a quien traicionarán: es a sus propias almas.   Ayn Rand Nueva

In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

Kant's expressly stated purpose was to save the morality of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice. He knew that it could not survive without a mystic base—and what it had to be saved from was reason.

Vosotros, que carecéis de normas de estima propia, aceptáis la culpa y no os atrevéis a formular preguntas.

And now, sitting here in our tunnel, we wonder about these words. It is forbidden, not to be happy.

Desde la necesidad más simple hasta la más alta abstracción religiosa, desde la rueda hasta el rascacielos, todo lo que somos y todo lo que tenemos procede de un solo atributo del hombre: la función de su mente razonadora.

Everything is something...

I do not seek to derive my happiness from the injury or the favor of others, but earn it by my own achievement. Just

I'll tell you…I'll tell you something…unhappiness is the hallmark of virtue. If a man is unhappy, really, truly unhappy, it means that he is a superior sort of person.

I do not grant the terms of reason to men who propose to deprive me of reason. I do not enter discussions with neighbors who think they can forbid me to think. I do not place my moral sanction upon a murderer's wish to kill me.

Build it as a monument to that spirit which is yours ... and could have been mine.

only gesture of protest open to me. What else could I offer you? The things people sacrifice are so little. I'll give you my marriage to Peter Keating. I'll refuse to permit myself happiness in their world. I'll take suffering. That will be my answer to them, and my gift to you. I shall probably never see you again. I shall try not to. But I will live for you, through every minute and every shameful act I take, I will live for you in my own way, in the only way I can.

I like to see a man standing at the foot of a skyscraper,' he said. 'It makes him no bigger than an ant - isn't that the correct bromide for the occasion? The God-damn fools! It's man who made it - the whole incredible mass of stone and steel. It doesn't dwarf him, it makes him greater than the structure. It reveals his true dimensions to the world. What we love about these buildings, Dominique, is the creative faculty, the heroic in man.

There are only individual minds and individual achievements—and a culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiated masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men.