Quotes from Ayn Rand

Men differ in their virtues, if any, but they are alike in their vices.

men will not cease to desire the impossible and will not lose their longing to destroy—so long as self-destruction and self-sacrifice are preached to them as the practical means of achieving the happiness of the recipients.

But if my love of truth is left as my only possession, then the greater the loss behind me, the greater the pride I may take in the price I have paid for that love.

There are no contradictions. When you think you found one. Check your premises.

It takes no kindness to respect a man who deserves respect - it's only payment which he's earned. To give an unearned respect is the supreme gesture of charity

You'll be one of us, so long as you'll remain in love with your rails and your engines—and they'll lead you back to us, no matter how many times you lose your way. The only man never to be redeemed is the man without passion.

beauty. Let's surpass them all! Let's throw their sweat in their face. Let's destroy them at one stroke. Let's be gods. Let's be ugly.

Dotados de juicio para actuar, no se nos admitirá un acto de propia elección. Trabajaremos bajo disposiciones y controles promulgados por quienes son incapaces de producir nada.

Si existen grados de maldad, resulta difícil definir cuál es el más despreciable: si el bruto que asume el derecho a forzar la mente de otros, o el degenerado moral que ofrece a otros el derecho a forzar su mente.

An irrational society is a society of moral cowards- of men paralyzed by the loss of moral standards , principles, and goals

All credit transactions are contractual agreements. A credit transaction is any exchange which involves a passage of time between the payment and the receipt of goods or services. This includes the vast majority of economic transactions in a complex industrial society.

In living entities, nature does not permit stillness: when one ceases to grow, one proceeds to disintegrate—in the mental realm no less than in the physical.

Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive.

Todo organismo viviente se enfrenta a una alternativa constante: la de la vida o la muerte. La vida es un proceso de acción, autosustentadora y autogenerada. Si un organismo falla en la misma, muere; sus elementos químicos perduran, pero su vida termina. Es sólo el concepto de vida el que hace posible el concepto de valor. Sólo para un ser viviente las cosas pueden resultar buenas o malas.

There are no solutions for the many contradictions inherent in the concept of "public property," particularly when the property is directly concerned with the dissemination of ideas. This is one of the reasons why the rebels would choose a state university as their first battleground.

and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This

When I look at the ocean, I feel the greatness of man. I think of man's magnificent capacity that created this ship to conquer all that senseless space. When I look at mountain peaks, I think of tunnels and dynamite. When I look at the planets, I think of airplanes.

The destroyer, she realized, was the name of that vision, here, in their world.

Una moralidad que se atreva a deciros que obtendréis la felicidad en la renunciación a vuestra dicha, que valoréis aquélla por el fracaso de vuestros valores, es una insolente negación de la moralidad.

The man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man and he degrades the conception of love.

he knew that the words they were eager to absorb and believe were the chains slipping in to hold them

Aborrecía los afectos sin causa, tal como aborrecía la riqueza inmerecida.

Since nature does not endow all men with equal beauty or equal intelligence, and the faculty of volition leads men to make different choices, the egalitarians propose to abolish the "unfairness" of nature and of volition, and to establish universal equality in fact—in defiance of facts.

Look, boys," he said wearily. "I know what you want. You want to eat my mills and have them, too. And all I want to know is this: what makes you think it's possible?