Quotes from Ayn Rand

People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it- walk.

Mediocrity doesn't mean average intelligence, it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters.

Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered peoples savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments.

The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive.

The purpose of the law is not to prevent a future offense, but to punish the one actually committed.

What do you know and how do you know it

A government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims

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 to live without breaking laws

The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be.

Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel

What is a demanding pleasure that demands the use of ones mind! Not in the sense of problem solving, but in the sense of exercising discrimination, judgment, awareness.

Live a life as a monument to your soul.

If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.

Don't fool yourself, my dear. You're much worse than a bitch. You're a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable.

To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.

Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism?

Great men can't be ruled.

Kill reverence and you've killed the hero in man.

The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.

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

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?

I think, therefore I'll think.

Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason.

Upper classes are a nation's past the middle class is its future.