Quotes from Ayn Rand

You'll get everything society can give a man. You'll keep all the money. You'll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You'll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I--I'll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt.

He wondered why he stood here, he wondered who had the right to demand that he waste a single irreplaceable hour of his life.

To love a man for his virtues is paltry and human, it tells you; to love him for his flaws is divine. To love those who are worthy of it is self-interest; to love the unworthy is sacrifice. You owe your love to those who don't deserve it, and the less they deserve it, the more love you owe them—the more loathsome the object, the nobler your love—the more unfastidious your love, the greater the virtue

The naked shoulder was gown's only ornament

I really believe that a building is a unit, not a city, so that city planning should not control all buildings. Because a house can be the product of one man, but a city cannot. And nothing collective can have the unity and integrity of a "unit.")

No matter what night preceded it, she had never known a morning when she did not feel the rose of a quiet excitement that became a tightening energy on her body and a hunger for action in her mind - because this was the beginning of a day and it was a day of HER life.

I, I am the day after tomorrow.

When thinkers accept those who deny the existence of thinking, as fellow thinkers of a different school of thought—it is they who achieve the destruction of the mind. They grant the enemy's basic premise, thus granting the sanction of reason to formal dementia. A basic premise is an absolute that permits no co-operation with its antithesis and tolerates no tolerance.

The plan was that everybody in the factory would work according to his ability, but would be paid according to his need.

Men who have found tbe right way of life do not seek to escape from awareness, to obliterate their consciousness, and to drug themselves out of existence. Drug addiction is the confession of an unbearable inner state.

I do not surrender my treasures, nor do I share them. The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.

He shared her conversations, he laughed with her friends, he was suddenly the devoted, attentive, admiring husband.

He knew that the conference was a trap; he knew also that he was walking into it with nothing for any trappers to gain.

I shall answer all the questions you are afraid to ask me openly. Do I wish to pay my workers more than their services are worth to me? I do not. Do I wish to sell my product for less than my customers are willing to pay me? I do not. Do I wish to sell it at a loss or give it away? I do not.

Identify the dominant philosophy of a society and you can predict its future.

In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival—so that for you, who are a human being, the question 'to be or not to be' is the question 'to think or not to think.' "A

didn't you enjoy meeting the young men?" "What men? There wasn't a man there I couldn't squash ten of.

Dr. Stadler once said that the first word of 'Free, scientific inquiry' was redundant. He seems to have forgotten it. Well, I'll just say that 'Governmental scientific inquiry' is a contradiction in terms.

Consistency is not a habit of mind which it is wise to practice or to expect of the human race.

There is no conflict, and no call for sacrifice, and no man is a threat to the aims of another—if men understand that reality is an absolute not to be faked, that lies do not work, that the unearned cannot be had, that the undeserved cannot be given, that the destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't.

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who

she dismissed it with the thought that there were many kinds of work which were offensive, yet necessary, such as cleaning sewers; somebody had to do it, and Jim seemed to like it.

from the fingertips of her one hand to her face, her body was naked but for his metal bracelet. "I'm sorry, Hank," she said, "but I had to do it.

There was a time when men were afraid that somebody would reveal some secret of theirs that was unknown to their fellows. Nowadays, they're afraid that somebody will name what everybody knows.