Quotes from Ayn Rand

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

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.

I am not morally obligated to care more for a man than he cares for himself.

When men abandon reason, physical force becomes their only means of dealing with one another and of settling disagreements.

In order to deal with reality successfully - to pursue and achieve the values which his life requires - man needs self-esteem; he needs to be confident of his efficacy and worth.

The purpose of man's life...is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question.

The most depraved type of human being ... (is) the man without a purpose.

To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.

The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is the conquest of men.

Morality is a code of black and white. When and if men attempt a compromise, it is obvious which side will necessarily lose and which will necessarily profit.

...if men are to be ruled, then the enemy is reason.

But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.

And man will go on. Man, not men.

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.

Mysticism requires the notion of the unknowable, which is revealed to some and withheld from others; this divides men into those who feel guilt and those who cash in on it.

Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don't ask them to achieve self-respect. They will hate your soul.

Nobody has ever given a reason why men should be their brother's keepers.

A man of independent judgment is a man of profound self-esteem.

Only the man who extols the purity of love devoid of desire, is capable of the depravity of a desire devoid of love.

A man's rights are not violated by a private individual's refusal to deal with him.

I want to be prepared to claim the greatest virtue of all - that I was a man who made money

The fact that a man has no claim on others ... does not preclude or prohibit good will among men and does not make it immoral to offer or to accept voluntary, non-sacrificial assistance.

Men prosper or fail, survive or perish in proportion to the degree of their rationality.

A rational man knows-or makes it a point to discover-the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come.