Quotes from Ayn Rand

I saw that any man's desire for money he could not earn was regarded as a righteous wish, but if he earned it, it was damned as greed. - Francisco d'Anconia

He would think of it later, he thought; one moves step by step and one must keep moving. For the moment, with an unnatural clarity, with a brutal simplification that made it almost easy, his consciousness contained nothing but one thought: It must not stop me. The sentence hung alone, with no past and no future. He did not think of what it was that must not stop him, or why this sentence was such a crucial absolute. It held him and he obeyed. He went step by step.

Child labor was not ended by legislative fiat; child labor ended when it became economically unnecessary for children to earn wages in order to survive—when the income of their parents became sufficient to support them. The emancipators and benefactors of those children were not legislators or factory inspectors, but manufacturers and financiers.

She was twelve years old when she told Eddie Willers that she would run the railroad when they grew up. She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. To hell with that, she thought -- and never worried about it again.

if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?" "I . . . don't know. What . . . could he do? What would you tell him?" "To shrug.

para qué trabajar? Sabías que tu mísera manutención básica te la darían en cualquier caso, trabajases o no..., tu "asignación para casa y comida", la llamaban..., y por encima de esa miseria podías olvidarte de conseguir algo, no importa cuánto lo intentases.

In the normal conditions of existence, man has to choose his goals, project them in time, pursue them and achieve them by his own effort. He cannot do it if his goals are at the mercy of and must be sacrificed to any misfortune happening to others. He cannot live his life by the guidance of rules applicable only to conditions under which human survival is impossible.

mind, Miss Taggart? My mind is not on the market any longer.

Acepta el hecho de que lograr tu felicidad es el único objetivo moral de tu vida, y que la felicidad..., no el dolor ni las extravagancias irresponsables, es la prueba de tu integridad moral, ya que es la prueba y el resultado de tu lealtad al logro de tus valores.

The greatest food for the greatest number—that's my slogan. At a time of desperate public need, it's our duty to sacrifice our luxurious tastes and eat our way back to prosperity by adapting ourselves to the simple, wholesome foodstuff on which the peoples of the Orient have so nobly subsisted for centuries. There's a great deal that we could learn from the peoples of the Orient.

But, after all, I did break one of your laws." "Well, what do you think they're for?

Durante siglos, la batalla moral fue librada entre quienes sostenían que sus vidas le pertenecen a Dios y quienes sostenían que les pertenecen a sus vecinos; entre aquellos que predicaban que el bien es el autosacrificio en beneficio de fantasmas en el paraíso, y aquellos que predicaban que el bien es el autosacrificio en provecho de los incompetentes de la Tierra. Y nadie te ha dicho que tu vida te pertenece y que el bien reside en vivirla plenamente.

Nunca perdemos del todo aquello por lo que vivimos. Quizá a veces cambiemos su forma, sobre todo si hemos cometido un error; pero el propósito sigue el mismo, y somos nosotros quines concebimos su forma.

you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed.

Value' is that which one acts to gain and keep, 'virtue' is the action by which one gains and keeps it.

What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it?

Al aceptar el castigo, no por culpa alguna, sino por nuestras virtudes, traicionamos nuestro codigo e hicimos posible el suyo.

Una transacción (en el sentido inmoral del término) no consiste en abandonar la comodidad personal, sino en abandonar las convicciones personales.

What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree, and to obey?

He stood looking at her as if it took all of his effort to keep his eyes directed at her face, to keep seeing her, to endure the sight. "What do you want?" he asked.

She wondered at the joyous, proud comfort to be found in a sense of the finite, in the knowledge that the field of one's concern lay within the realm of one's sight.

By refusing to say 'It is,' you are refusing to say 'I am.

For the battle they lost can never be lost. For that which they died to save can never perish. Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through. And man will go on. Man, not men.

One of the ugliest characteristics of today's world is the mixture of frantic war preparations with hysterical peace propaganda, and the fact that both come from the same source—from the same political philosophy. If mankind is ever to achieve peace, the first step will be made when people realize that today's peace movements are not advocates of peace.