Quotes from Ayn Rand

I take the only desire one can really permit oneself. Freedom, Alvah, freedom." "You call that freedom?" "To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing." "What if you found something you wanted?" "I won't find it. I won't choose to see it. It would be part of that lovely world of yours. I'd have to share it with all the rest of you—and I wouldn

It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man's proper stature—and that the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning—and it is those few that I have always sought to address.

Quédate aquí hasta que tú misma contestes. No tienes sitio adonde ir; no puedes moverte; no puedes empezar a planearte un camino hasta... hasta que sepas lo suficiente como para escoger un final.

The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash—that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value.

Happiness? But that is so middle-class. What is happiness? There are so many things in life so much more important than happiness." Keating

When Helen's father compliments Annie on the fact that she has taught Helen the rudiments of discipline, Annie, discouraged, answers: ". . . to do nothing but obey is—no gift, obedience without understanding is a—blindness, too.

Did he go out, drink, have a good time?" "Never." "Does he like money?" "No." "Does he like to be admired?" "No." "Does he believe in God?" "No." "Does he talk much?" "Very little." "Does he listen if others discuss any ... idea with him?" "He listens. It would be better if he didn't.

Do you ever look at the people in the street? Aren't you afraid of them? I am. 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.

Al serle preguntado cierto día si era capaz de nombrar a un hombre más malvado aún que el que cierra su corazón a la misericordia, respondió: El que utiliza como arma la compasión del otro

Él sonrió, no del todo a ella, sino como divertido ante un repentino recuerdo suyo.

I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need?

Love is our response to our highest values—and can be nothing else.

Your kind of intellectuals are the first to scream when it's safe—and the first to shut their traps at the first sign of danger. They spend years spitting at the man who feeds them—and they lick the hand of the man who slaps their drooling faces.

Life consist of motion with purpose

No political system can establish universal rationality by law (or by force). But capitalism is the only system that functions in a way which rewards rationality and penalizes all forms of irrationality, including racism.

If there's not enough guilt in the world, we must create it. If we teach a man that it's evil to look at spring flowers and he believes us and then does it —we'll be able to do whatever we please with him. He won't defend himself. He won't feel he's worth it. He won't fight. But save us from the man who lives up to his own standards. Save us from the man of clean conscience. He's the man who'll beat us.

The prisoners liked to talk about their past. Their memories were the only future they had.

She found that she liked the solitude; she awakened in the morning with a feeling of confident benevolence, the sense that she could venture forth and be willing to deal with whatever she found. In the city, she had lived in chronic tension to withstand the shock of anger, indignation, disgust, contempt. The only danger to threaten her here was the simple pain of some physical accident; it seemed innocent and easy by comparison.

Annie. Maybe you all do. It's my idea of the original sin. "James. What is?" "Annie. Giving up. "James. You won't open her. Why can't you let her be? Have some—pity on her, for being what she is— "Annie. If I'd ever once thought like that, I'd be dead!

Who is on trial in this case? Karen Andre? No! It's you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, who are here on trial. It is your own souls that will be brought to light when your decision is rendered." Excerpt From: Ayn Rand. "Night of January 16th.

The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not "selflessness" or "sacrifice," but integrity. Integrity is loyalty to one's convictions and values; it is the policy of acting in accordance with one's values, of expressing, upholding and translating them into practical reality. If a man professes to love a woman, yet his actions are indifferent, inimical or damaging to her, it is his lack of integrity that makes him immoral.

Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence, working for less than their barest survival, leaving nothing but scraps for their rulers to loot, refusing to think, to venture, to produce, when the ultimate collector of their profits and the final authority on truth or error was the whim of some gilded degenerate sanctioned as superior to reason by divine right and by grace of a club.

I am done with this creed of corruption.

They remained silent, letting the room be filled by the sounds which centuries of men and of struggle had established as the symbol of joyous attainment: the blast of the cork, the laughing tinkle of a pale gold liquid running into two broad cups filled with the weaving reflections of candles, the whisper of bubbles rising through two crystal stems, almost demanding that everything in sight rise, too, in the same aspiration.