Quotes from Ayn Rand

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.

Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.

I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.

Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.

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

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

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

Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.

I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.

If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?" I…don't know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?" To shrug.

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

A man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions.... He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer--because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement.

To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?

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

My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.

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.

Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.

Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.

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

I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life.

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

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

That time and those people are upon you!

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