Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics—a rational ethics—as a precondition of rebirth.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Ethics
Upper classes are a nation’s past; the middle class is its future.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: The Future, Class, Future
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.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: The Mind, Awareness, Mind
We cannot fight against anything, unless we fight for something—and what we must fight for is the supremacy of reason, and a view of man as a rational being.
—Ayn Rand
Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence.
—Ayn Rand
Do not consider Collectivists as sincere but deluded idealists. The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal; brutality is not idealistic, no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to do good by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Idealism
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Charity, Giving, Living
The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Being True to Yourself
Just as man can’t exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Property
Reality confronts man with a great many “musts,” but all of them are conditional; the formula of realistic necessity is: “You must, if” and the “if” stands for man’s choice.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Reality
Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven, but not those who lack the courage of their own greatness.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Betrayal, Courage, Growth
This is the difference between my morality and hedonism. The standard is not: that is good which gives me pleasure, just because it gives me pleasure (which is the standard of the dipsomaniac or the sex-chaser)
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Morals
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
—Ayn Rand
All public interest legislation (and any distribution of money taken by force from some men for the unearned benefit of others) comes down ultimately to the grant of an undefined undefinable, non-objective, arbitrary power to some government officials. The worst aspect of it is not that such a power can be used dishonestly, but that it cannot be used honestly. The wisest man in the world, with the purest integrity, cannot find a criterion for the just, equitable, rational application of an unjust, inequitable, irrational principle.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Law
Every man is free to rise as far as he’s able or willing but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he’ll rise.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Positive Attitudes, Optimism
The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Opportunity, Success
The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive – a definition that invalidates man’s consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society – a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself…. The purpose of man’s life, say both, is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Man, Mankind
Why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world—to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Rest, Evil, Teach, Kind, Great, Courage
To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Men
The idea that ‘the public interest’ supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.
—Ayn Rand
Government ‘help’ to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.
—Ayn Rand
If you agree with some tenets of Objectivism, but disagree with others, do not call yourself an Objectivist; give proper authorship credit for the parts you agree with.
—Ayn Rand
The purpose of the law is not to prevent a future offense, but to punish the one actually committed.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Law
Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason.
—Ayn Rand
Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.
—Ayn Rand
A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
—Ayn Rand
It is the metaphysically given that must be accepted: it cannot be changed.It is the man-made that must never be accepted uncritically: it must be judged, then accepted or rejected and changed when necessary.
—Ayn Rand
Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Capitalism
A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.
—Ayn Rand
Topics: Integrity
Unjust laws have to be fought ideologically; they cannot be fought or corrected by means of mere disobedience and futile martyrdom.
—Ayn Rand
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Isaac Asimov American Novelist, Critic, Popular Scientist
- Vladimir Nabokov Russian-born American Novelist
- Gore Vidal American Novelist
- Joyce Carol Oates American Novelist
- Igor Stravinsky Russian-born American Composer
- Vladimir Horowitz Russian-born American Pianist
- Leo Rosten American Humorist
- Bernard Berenson American Art Critic
- Anita Loos American Actor
- Philip Roth American Novelist, Short-story Writer
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