Ayn Rand quotes - page 17

They proclaim that every man is entitled to exist without labor and, the laws of reality to the contrary notwithstanding, is entitled to receive his 'minimum sustenance' his food, his clothes, his shelter with no effort on his part, as his due and his birthright. To receive it from whom. (Ayn Rand)
Whenever anyone accuses some person of being 'unfeeling,' he means that that person is just. He means that that person has no causeless emotions and will not grant him a feeling which he does not deserve. He means that 'to feel' is to go against reason, against moral values, against reality. View quote
Ayn Rand
Reality confronts man with a great many musts, but all of them are conditional the formula of realistic necessity is You must, if and the if stands for man's choice. View quote
Ayn Rand
The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. View quote
Ayn Rand
Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the future -- if mankind is to have a future. View quote
Ayn Rand
Don't consider our interests or desires. You have no duty to anyone but yourself. View quote
Ayn Rand
What for was the first question he asked about any activity proposed to him and nothing would make him act, if he found no valid answer. He flew through the days of his summer month like a rocket, but if one stopped him in mid-flight, he could always name the purpose of his every random moment. Two things were impossible to him to stand still or to move aimlessly. View quote
Ayn Rand
The fortune my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom. View quote
Ayn Rand
She stood at the window, her arms spread wide, holding on to each side of the frame, it was as if she held a piece of the city. View quote
Ayn Rand
When a man feels fear without reason, you call him to the attention of a psychiatrist; you are not so careful to protect the meaning, the nature and the dignity of love. View quote
Ayn Rand
You still love me - even if there's one expression of it that you will always feel and want, but will not give me no longer. I'm still what I was, and you'll always see it, and you'll always grant me the same response, even if there's a greater one that you grant another man. No matter what you feel for him, it will not change what you feel for me, and it won't treason to either, because it comes from the same root, it's the same payment in answer to the same values. (Ayn Rand)
He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it or dismiss it. View quote
Ayn Rand
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. View quote
Ayn Rand
Unjust laws have to be fought ideologically they cannot be fought or corrected by means of mere disobedience and futile martyrdom. View quote
Ayn Rand
The lust that drives others to enslave an empire, had become, in her limits, a passion for power over him. She had set out to break him, as if, unable to equal his value, she could surpass it by destroying it, as if the measure of his greatness would thus become the measure of hers, as if the vandal who smashed a statue were greater than the artist who had made it, as if the murderer who killed a child were greater than the mother who had given it birth. View quote
Ayn Rand
If there is any one proof of a man's incompetence, it is the stagnant mentality of a worker who, doing some small routine job in a vast undertaking, does not care to look beyond the lever of a machine, does not choose to know how the machine got there or what makes his job possible, and proclaims that the management of the undertaking is parasitical and unnecessary. View quote
Ayn Rand
He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost fascinating. View quote
Ayn Rand
And that night we knew that to hold the body of women in our arms in neither ugly nor shameful, but the one ecstasy granted to the race of men. View quote
Ayn Rand
He wanted her. He knew where to find her. He waited. It amused him to wait, because he knew that the waiting was unbearable to her. He knew that his absence bound her to him in a manner more complete and humiliating than his presence could enforce. He was giving her time to attempt an escape, in order to let her know her own helplessness when he chose to see her again. View quote
Ayn Rand
We, Equality 7-2521, were not happy in those year in the Home of the Students. It was not that the learning was too hard for us. It was that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them. The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked at us. View quote
Ayn Rand
When she had gone upstairs, he walked to a window and stood looking up at the sky. His head thrown back, he felt the pull of his throat muscles and he wondered whether the peculiar solemnity of looking at the sky comes, not from what one contemplates, but from that uplift of one's head. (Ayn Rand)
You are damned, and we wish to share your damnation. View quote
Ayn Rand
Your emotional capacity is an empty motor, and your values are the fuel with which your mind fills it. If you choose a mix of contradictions, it will clog your motor, corrode your transmission and wreck you on your first attempt to move with a machine which you, the driver, have corrupted. View quote
Ayn Rand
He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth. They professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things for which he could wish to be loved. View quote
Ayn Rand
What I want you to understand, is the full evil of those who claim to have become convinced that this earth, by its nature, is a realm of malevolence where the good has no chance to win. Let them check their premises. Let them check their standards of value. Let them check before they grant themselves the unspeakable license of evil-as-necessity whether they know what is the good and what are the conditions it requires. View quote
Ayn Rand