Ayn Rand

The cult of moral grayness is a revolt against moral values.

To say "I love you" one must first be able to say the "I."

Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.

Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics a rational ethics as a precondition of rebirth.

It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.

Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work, pride is the result.

Mans unique reward however is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background man survives by adjusting his background to himself.

All depressions are caused by government interference and the cure is always offered to take more of the poison that caused the disaster. Depressions are not the result of a free economy.

Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property.

Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future.

Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.

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

Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.

Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.

The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.

Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.

Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.

The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.

Mediocrity doesn't mean average intelligence, it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters.

We are now moving towards complete collectivism or socialism, a system under which everybody is enslaved to everybody.

Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason.

To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.

When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.

The argument from intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.

Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society.

Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish but it will not replace you as the driver

To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.

The question isn't who's going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.

Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

The question isn't who's going to let me; it's who's going to stop me.

Government 'help' to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.

To say I love you one must know first how to say the I.

There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.

For the first time since her return she felt pain a violent pain but it made her feel alive because it was worth feeling.

It ballet is a perfect medium for the expression of spiritual love.

The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendour that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach.

I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.

The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.

The best most natural dialogue is usually written as if the writer is listening to dictation. You might get stuck on any particular point and have to question yourself but normally dialogue writes itself.

We have come to see how great is the unexplored.

An emotion is an automatic response an automatic effect of mans value premises. An effect not a cause. There is no necessary clash no dichotomy between mans reason and his emotions

When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.

God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive.

The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently; they are most helplessly in its power.

Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.

Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.

Those who say theory and practice are two unrelated realms are fools in one and scoundrels in the other.

Individualism regards man-every man-as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.

Whenever anyone accuses some person of being unfeeling he means that that person is just.

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.

Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

An irresponsible person is a person who makes vague promises then breaks his word blames it on circumstances and expects other people to forgive it.

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.

There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions to an individual, but permitted to a mob.

In any compromise between good and evil it is only evil that can profit.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.

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

Altruism does not mean mere kindness or generosity, but the sacrifice of the best among men to the worst, the sacrifice of virtues to flaws, of ability to incompetence, of progress to stagnation-and the subordinating of all life and of all values to the claims of anyone's suffering.

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights including property rights in which all property is privately owned.

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.

The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone

Existence is Identity consciousness is identification.

The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.

We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savages whole existence is public ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.

From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.

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

People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk.

Live a life as a monument to your soul.

Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

Guilt is a rope that wears thin.

Government "help" to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose but no power to escape the necessity of choice.

The purpose of morality is to teach you not to suffer and die but to enjoy yourself and live.

Upper classes are a nations past the middle class is its future.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.

Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living.

There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another.

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.

If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.

A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal that is worth achieving.

The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion...th at in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing-you may know that your society is doomed.

The evaluation of an action as practical depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

The fields are black and ploughed, and they lie like a great fan before us, with their furrows gathered in some hand beyond the sky, spreading forth from that hand, opening wide apart as they come toward us, like black pleats that sparkle with thin, green spangles.

Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.

A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.