Quotes from Ayn Rand

And I wish I had the power to tell tem that the despair of their hearts was not to be final, and their night was not without hope. For the battle they lost can never be lost.

You don't have to see through the eyes of others, hold onto yours, stand on your own judgment, you know that what is, is–say it aloud, like the holiest of prayers, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned. I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command not obey.

When a man feels fear without reason, you call him to the attention of a psychiatrist; you are not so careful to protect the meaning, the nature and the dignity of love.

Every honest man lives for himself. Every man worth calling a man lives for himself. The one who doesn't - doesn't live at all.

The pressure disappeared with the first word he put on paper. He thought--while his hand moved rapidly--what a power there was in words; later, for those who heard them, but first for the one who found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier. He thought, perhaps the basic secret the scientists have not discovered, the first fount of life, is that which happens when a thought takes shape in words.

There's nothing of any importance in life—except how well you do your work.

You will follow me, if we are what we are, you and I, if we live, if the world exists, if you know the meaning of this moment and can't let it slip by, as others let it slip, into the senselessness of the unwilled and unreached.

Through the dry phases of calculations in her mind, she noticed that she did have time to feel something: it was the hard, exhilarating pleasure of action.

To fear to face an issue to believe that the worst is true. --Atlas Shrugged

Great men can't be ruled... The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional.

I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.

As a matter of fact, the person who loves everybody and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind. He expects nothing of men, so no form of depravity can outrage him.

I think that when in doubt about the truth of an issue, it's safer and in better taste to select the least numerous of the adversaries.

Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind.

It is not advisable, James, to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener. | S1C5

You don't know how hard I've tried to be left standing all by myself.

She fell asleep, lying there, her hand clasping his. Her last awareness, before she surrendered the responsibility of consciousness, was the sense of an enormous void, the void of a city and of a continent, where she would never be able to find the man whom she had no right to seek.

Be ugly, be God

What whip lashed them to their knees in shame and submission? The worship of the word We.

For they have nothing to fight me with, save the brute force of their numbers. I have my mind.

Did it ever occur to you, asked Kira, that I may be here for the very unusual, unnatural reason of wanting to learn a work I like only because I like it?

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

It takes two to make every great career: the man who is great, and the man-almost rarer-who is great enough to see greatness and say so.