Quotes from Ayn Rand

It was a satisfying bravery; it never aroused antagonism.

They rouse themselves mentally only long enough to utter an I wish, and stop there, and wait, as if the rest were up to some unknown power.

Entonces los que se odian a sí mismos y los que odian la vida, sólo conciben una única forma equivalente al amor: la destrucción. Lillian lo habia elegido por lo mejor de sus virtudes.

a man with an immense capacity for the enjoyment of existence.

Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence.

Sabe que ha de actuar de un modo adecuado. Equivocarse en la acción significa peligro para su vida; equivocarse en la persona, ser malo, significa no estar en condiciones para la existencia.

A rational, self-confident man is motivated by a love of values and by a desire to achieve them. A neurotic is motivated by fear and by a desire to escape it. This difference in motivation is reflected, not only in the things each type of man will seek for pleasure, but in the nature of the pleasure they will experience.

He said that architecture was truly the greatest of the arts, because it was anonymous, as all greatness. He said that the world had many famous buildings, but few renowned builders, which was as it should be, since no one man had ever created anything of importance in architecture, or elsewhere, for that matter.

But he had never been as happy as when he took her to fraternity dances. He had had many violent loves, when he swore he could not live without this girl or that; he forgot Catherine for weeks at a time and she never reminded him. He had always come back to her, suddenly, inexplicably, as he did tonight. Her

The main issue was the attempt to make the country accept mass civil disobedience as a proper and valid tool of political action.

If this is what has beaten us, he thought, the guilt is ours.

Pero cuando el pueblo son seis mil voces berreantes tratando de decidir sin rasero ni medida, cuando no hay reglas del juego y cada uno puede exigir lo que se le ocurra pero no tiene derecho a nada, cuando todo el mundo tiene poder sobre la vida de todo el mundo excepto sobre la suya propia...

When you see that in order to produce, you need to ask permission from men who produce nothing - When you see the money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming self-sacrifice - You may know that your society is doomed Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged 1957

La fuerza y el espíritu son cosas opuestas; la moralidad acaba donde empieza a esgrimirse un arma.

For every living species, growth is a necessity of survival. Life is motion, a process of self-sustaining action that an organism must carry on in order to remain in existence. This principle is equally evident in the simple energy-conversions of a plant and in the long-range, complex activities of man. Biologically, inactivity is death.

Every political system is based on some code of ethics.

lo correcto siempre funciona y siempre triunfa.

La palabra «Nosotros» es como cal derramada sobre los hombres, que los solidifica y endurece hasta hacerlos de piedra, y que aplasta todo bajo ella, y aquello que es blanco y aquello que es negro se pierden igualmente en su gris. Es la palabra mediante la cual los depravados roban la virtud de los buenos, mediante la cual los débiles roban el vigor de los fuertes, mediante la cual los necios roban la sabiduría de los sabios.

El propósito de la filosofía no es el de buscar el conocimiento, sino el de demostrar que dicho conocimiento es imposible para el hombre.

The place is built around it. The statue of a naked woman. If you understand the building, you understand what the figure must be. The human spirit. The heroic in man. The aspiration and the fulfillment, both. Uplifted in its quest - and uplifting by its own essence. Seeking God - and finding itself.

It is not my function," said Wynand, "to help people preserve a self-respect they haven't got. You give them what they profess to like in public. I give them what they really like.

A culture is made or destroyed by its articulate voices.

The professional businessman and the professional intellectual came into existence together, as brothers born of the industrial revolution. Both are the sons of capitalism—and if they perish, they will perish together. The tragic irony will be that they will have destroyed each other; and the major share of the guilt will belong to the intellectual.

Seeking God—and finding itself.