Ayn Rand Quotes

The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it.

Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.

We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.

We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.

My greatest personal mistake is ever to allow a word or moment that “doesn’t count,” i.e., that I do not refer to my own basic principles. Every word, every action, every moment counts. (This is the pattern on which everybody makes mistakes [or] becomes irrational - not relating their one action or one conviction to another.

He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it or dismiss it.

Words are a lens to focus one’s mind.

I love doing it. Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.

The only pride of her workday was not that it had been lived, but that it had been survived. It was wrong, she thought, it was viciously wrong that one should ever be forced to say that about any hour of one's life.

Politically, the goal of today’s dominant trend
is statism.
Philosophically, the goal is the
obliteration of reason;
psychologically, it is the
erosion of ambition.

She's a writer. The kind of writer who wouldn't be published outside. She believes that when one deals with words, one deals with the mind.

I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you...Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference

I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.

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.

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

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?

Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.

My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.

He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see.

Never ask people. Not about your work. Don't you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?