Quotes from Ayn Rand

Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel.

What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can't stand still. It must grow or perish.

Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.

If a man wants love he should correct his weaknesses, or his flaws, and he may deserve it. But he cannot expect the unearned, either in love or in money; either in matter or in spirit.

There's nothing of any importance in life — except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value.

Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection, and the base of a moral existence.

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.

To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense.

Individualism regards man-every man-as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.

To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.

An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.

Patience is always rewarded and romance is always round the corner!

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.

Let no man posture as an advocate of peace if he proposes or supports any social system that initiates the use of force against individual men, in any form.

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.

Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.

Politically, the goal of today's dominant trend is statism. Philosophically, the goal is the obliteration of reason; psychologically, it is the erosion of ambition.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves.

I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.

An inventor is a man who asks 'Why?' of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.

A culture is made — or destroyed — by its articulate voices.

An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.

Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go.