Ayn Rand quotes - page 15

The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity. (Ayn Rand)
The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence. View quote
Ayn Rand
America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. View quote
Ayn Rand
To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality. View quote
Ayn Rand
Great men can't be ruled. View quote
Ayn Rand
Creation comes before distribution -- or there will be nothing to distribute. View quote
Ayn Rand
Don't ever get angry at a man for stating the truth. View quote
Ayn Rand
Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. View quote
Ayn Rand
Only the man who extols the purity of love devoid of desire, is capable of the depravity of a desire devoid of love. View quote
Ayn Rand
The worst guilt is to accept an undeserved guilt - and that is what you have been doing all your life. View quote
Ayn Rand
No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy. (Ayn Rand)
I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet. View quote
Ayn Rand
Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. View quote
Ayn Rand
The adversary she found herself forced to fight was not worth matching or beating it was not a superior ability which she would have found honour in challenging it was ineptitude a grey spread of cotton that seemed soft and shapeless, that could offer no resistance to anything or anybody, yet managed to be a barrier in her way. She stood, disarmed, before the riddle of what made this possible, she could find no answer. View quote
Ayn Rand
To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense. View quote
Ayn Rand
I'm working to improve my methods, and every hour I save is an hour added to my life. View quote
Ayn Rand
Don't rely on our knowledge of what's best for your future. We do know, but it can't be best until you know it. View quote
Ayn Rand
When personal judgment is inoperative (or forbidden), men's first concern is not how to choose, but how to justify their choice. View quote
Ayn Rand
All work is an act of philosophy. View quote
Ayn Rand
Love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one's own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love. View quote
Ayn Rand
To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight. (Ayn Rand)
And questions give us no rest. We know not why our curse makes us seek we know not what, ever and ever. But we cannot resist it. It whispers to us that there are great things on this earth of ours, and that we can know them if we try, and that we must know them. We ask, why must we know, but it has no answer to give us. We must know that we may know. View quote
Ayn Rand
Man is a being with free will therefore, each man is potentially good or evil, and its up to him and only him (through his reasoning mind) to decide which he wants to be. View quote
Ayn Rand
Consider the reasons which make us certain that we are right, but not the fact that we are certain. If you are not convinced, ignore our certainty. Don't be tempted to substitute our judgment for your own. View quote
Ayn Rand
And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor's pocket? No, it's not as easy as that. If that were all, I'd say ninety-five percent of humanity were honest, upright men. Only, as you can see, they aren't. Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. View quote
Ayn Rand