Quotes from Ayn Rand

Many words have been granted me, and some are wise, and some are false, but only three are holy: "I will it!

The air is pure under the ground. There is no odor of men.

It is my mind which thinks, and the judgement of my mind is the only searchlight that can find the truth. It is my will which chooses, and the choice of my will is the only edict I must respect.

We will not deal with men on any terms but ours—and our terms are a moral code which holds that man is an end in himself and not the means to any end of others. We do not seek to force our code upon them. They are free to believe what they please.

I think that your sister is awful. I think it's disgusting-a woman acting like a grease-monkey and posing around like a big executive. It's so unfeminine. Who does she think she is, anyway?

The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone. — Ayn Rand (The Virtue of Selfishness)

They move past you and they wear hats and they carry bundles. But that's not the substance of them. The substance of them is hatred for any man who loves his work. That's the only kind they fear. I don't know why. You're opening yourself up, Roark, for each and every one of them. But I never notice the people in the streets.

It was strange to be conscious of another person's existence, to feel it as a close, urgent necessity; a necessity without qualifications, neither pleasant nor painful, merely final like an ultimatum. It was important to know that she existed in the world; it was important to think of her, of how she had awakened this morning, of how she moved, with her body still his, now his forever, of what she thought.

But it's a crime! It's a crime against the nation. Don't you know that?" "No." "It's against the law!" "Yes.

I will not help you to pretend that I have a chance. I will not help you to preserve an appearance of righteousness where rights are not recognized. I will not help you to preserve an appearance of rationality by entering a debate in which a gun is the final argument. I will not help you to pretend that you are administering justice.

Rearden. He didn't invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn't have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it's his? Why does he think it's his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.

The audience looked at him. They felt he had no chance. They could drop the nameless resentment, the sense of insecurity which he aroused in most people. And so, for the first time, they could see him as he was: a man totally innocent of fear.

She came back many days later. She saw him, unexpectedly, on a flat stretch of stone before her, by the side of the path. She stopped short. She did not want to come too close. It was strange to see him before her, without the defence and excuse of distance.

Roark stood before them as each man stands in the innocence of his own mind. But Roark stood like that before a hostile crowd—and they knew suddenly that no hatred was possible to him.

Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment's torture.

It's as if they'd heard that there are values one is supposed to honor and this is what one does to honor them -- so they went through the motions, like ghosts pulled by some sort of distant echoes from a better age.

I threw it down the air shaft. There's a concrete floor below.

Why yes, I can," said Midas Mulligan, when he was asked whether he could name a person more evil than the man with a heart closed to pity. "The man who uses another's pity for him as a weapon.

Paradoxically, it is the so-called pleasure-chasers—the men who seemingly live for nothing but the sensation of the moment, who are concerned only with having a good time—who are psychologically incapable of enjoying pleasure as an end in itself. The neurotic pleasure-chaser imagines that, by going through the motions of celebration, he will be able to make himself feel that he has something to celebrate.

When you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction.

Reason is the most naive of all superstitions.

Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think.

The faces of the others looked like aggregates of interchangeable features, every face oozing to blend into the anonymity of resembling all, and all looking as if they were melting. Rearden's face, with the sharp planes, the pale blue eyes, the ash-blond hair, had the firmness of ice; the uncompromising clarity of its lines made it look, among the others, as if he were moving through a fog, hit by a ray of light.

He sat looking at her. She waited to see the derisive smile, but it did not come. The smile seemed implicit in the room itself, in her standing there, halfway across that room.