Quotes from Ayn Rand

Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism.

Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence.

Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.

We are all brothers under the skin - and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.

Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the future -- if mankind is to have a future

One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor.

Action without thought is mindlessness, and thought without action is hypocritical.

If you want to feel good, be rational.

The genius must have his freedom and his independence.

Do not let the hero in your soul perish.

He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost fascinating.

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

If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.

The more you learn, the more you know that you know nothing.

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.

Ideas are the greatest and most crucially practical power on earth.

Self-esteem is reliance on one's power to think... The man of authentic self-confidence is the man who relies on the judgment of his own mind.

"Mediocrity" doesn't mean average intelligence, it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters.

No man can use his brain to think for another.

The exquisite kindliness of her manner suggested that their relationship was of no possible consequence, that she could not pay him the tribute of hostility.

There has never been a philosophy, a theory or a doctrine, that attacked (or 'limited') reason, which did not preach submission to the power of some authority.

to rest one's case on faith means to concede that reason is on the side of one's enemies- that one has no rational arguments to offer.

Faith is the wors curse of mankind, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought.

The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind