Ayn Rand quotes - page 18

The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently they are most helplessly in its power. (Ayn Rand)
Who was it that said he needed a fulcrum Give me an unobstructed right-of-way and I'll show them how to move the earth. View quote
Ayn Rand
Contrary to the vulgar belief that men are motivated primarily by materialistic considerations, we now see the capitalist system being discredited and destroyed all over the world, even though this system has given men the greatest material comforts. View quote
Ayn Rand
I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence. View quote
Ayn Rand
Rights are not a matter of numbers - and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob. View quote
Ayn Rand
The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man's first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men. View quote
Ayn Rand
He wanted nothing, for the time being, except to understand .... Without advice, assistance or plan, he began reading an incongruous assortment of books; he would find some passage which he could not understand in one book, and he would get another on that subject .... There was no order in his reading; but there was order in what remained of it in his mind. View quote
Ayn Rand
I am. I think. I will. View quote
Ayn Rand
Because the beauty of the human body is that it hasn't a single muscle which doesn't serve its purpose; that there's not a line wasted; that every detail of it fits one idea, the idea of a man and the life of a man. View quote
Ayn Rand
Kill reverence and you've killed the hero in man. View quote
Ayn Rand
God help us, ma'am Do you see what we saw We saw that we'd been given a law to live by, a moral law, they called it, which punished those who observed it for observing it. The more you tried to live up to it, the more you suffered the more you cheated it, the bigger reward you got. Your honesty was like a tool left at the mercy of the next man's dishonesty. The honest ones paid, the dishonest collected. The honest lost, the dishonest won. How long could men stay good under this sort of a law of goodness. (Ayn Rand)
He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see. View quote
Ayn Rand
Who is John Galt? View quote
Ayn Rand
Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others. View quote
Ayn Rand
The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. View quote
Ayn Rand
She knew that even pain can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the witness, yet they could let each other see it without the need of protection. View quote
Ayn Rand
There's so much nonsense about human inconstancy and the transience of all emotions. I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place. View quote
Ayn Rand
How do you always manage to decide?" "How can you let others decide for you? View quote
Ayn Rand
But it cannot be done to you without your consent. If you permit it to be done, you you deserve it. View quote
Ayn Rand
Moral absolute one does not. View quote
Ayn Rand
Your ego is your strictest judge. (Ayn Rand)
If a life could have a theme song and I believe every worthwhile one has mine is a religion, an obsession, a mania or all of these expressed in one word individualism. I was born with that obsession, and I've never seen and do not know now a cause more worthy, more misunderstood, more seemingly hopeless and tragically needed. View quote
Ayn Rand
A building has integrity, just as a man and just as seldom! It must be true to its own idea, have its own form, and serve its own purpose!"." View quote
Ayn Rand
...When you have established that one alternative is good and the other is evil, there is no justification for the choice of a mixture. There is no justification ever for choosing any part of what you know to be evil. View quote
Ayn Rand
And what is the state but a servant and a convenience for a large number of people, just like the electric light and the plumbing system And wouldn't it be preposterous to claim that men must exist for their plumbing, not the plumbing for the men. View quote
Ayn Rand