Quotes from Ayn Rand

The integrated sum of a man's basic values is his sense of life.

He has had a terrible struggle, but what does that matter? It is proper, it is noble that he should have endured suffering, injustice, abuse at the hands of his brothers—in order to enrich their lives and teach them to appreciate the beauty of great music.

JURO POR MI VIDA Y MI AMOR POR ELLA, QUE JAMÁS VIVIRÉ PARA NADIE, NI EXIGIRÉ QUE NADIE VIVA PARA MÍ.

She had been proved right so eloquently, she had thought, that comments were unnecessary.

I don't intend to build in order to have clients. I intend to have clients in order to build.

An honest man does not desire until he has identified the object of his desire. He

To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.

No podía permitir que funcionara frenado por la advertencia: Cuidado. Mas despacio. Cautela. No trabajes a pleno rendimiento si no te lo exigen.

Litigants obey the verdict of a tribunal solely on the premise that there is an objective rule of conduct, which they both accept.

It takes two to make a very great career: the man who is great, and the man--almost rarer--who is great enough to see greatness and say so.

Przysi?gam — na swoje ?ycie i swoj? mi?o?? do niego — ?e nigdy nie b?d? ?y? dla innego cz?owieka ani prosi? go, by ?y? dla mnie.

2. To facilitate the acceptance of force, the Berkeley rebels attempted to establish a special distinction between force and violence: force, they claimed explicitly, is a proper form of social action, but violence is not. Their definition of the terms was as follows: coercion by means of a literal physical contact is "violence" and is reprehensible; any other way of violating rights is merely "force" and is a legitimate, peaceful method of dealing with opponents.

One doesn't get to be first in anything without the strength to make some sacrifices.

Don't despise the middleman. He's necessary. Someone had to tell them. It takes two to make a very good career: the man who is great, and the man-almost rarer-who is great enough to see greatness and say so.

had stood there silently, watching, without interest or purpose, like a chemical compound on a photographic plate, absorbing visual shapes because they were there to be absorbed, but unable ever to form any estimate of the objects of her vision.

What I was referring to was not religion as such, but a special category of abstractions, the most exalted one, which, for centuries, had been the near-monopoly of religion: ethics--not the particular content of religious ethics, but the abstraction ethics, the realm of values, man's code of good and evil, with the emotional connotations of height, uplift, nobility, reverence, grandeur, which pertain to the realm of man's values, but which religion has arrogated to itself.

He telephoned half an hour ago. Mr. Gail Wynand.

Almost unanimously, man is regarded as an unnatural phenomenon: either as a supernatural entity, whose mystic (divine) endowment, the mind ("soul"), is above nature—or as a subnatural entity, whose mystic (demoniacal) endowment, the mind, is an enemy of nature ("ecology"). The purpose of all such theories is to exempt man from the Law of Identity.

The issue now is men's lack of integrity, their failure to act according to the ideals they espouse.

Its the critic's job to interpret the artist, even to the artist himself.

conformarse con un trabajo que requiere menos que la plena capacidad de tu mente es apagar tu motor y sentenciarte a la decadencia; de que nuestro trabajo es el proceso de alcanzar nuestros valores, y de que perder nuestra ambición por los valores es perder nuestra ambición de vivir; de que nuestro cuerpo es una máquina, pero nuestra mente es su conductor, y se debe conducir tan lejos como nos lleve nuestra mente

a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right.

That's the sort of thing I want you to understand. To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul—would you understand why that's much harder?

Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.