Ayn Rand Quotes - Page 3

An inventor is a man who asks 'Why?' of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.

The view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve, my life and my values could not bring me to that.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

A culture is made - or destroyed - by its articulate voices.

Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade...

And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: 'I.

Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind.

An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.

Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration.

Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential.

Man is an end in himself.

If that which we have found is the corruption of solitude, then what can men wish for save corruption? If this is the great evil of being alone, than what is good and what is evil?

Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.

Well, I always know what I want. And when you know what you want-you go toward it. Sometimes you go very fast, and sometimes only an inch a year. Perhaps you feel happier when you go fast. I don't know. I've forgotten the difference long ago, because it really doesn't matter, so long as you move.

People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been-for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy.

Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.

What in hell are you really made of, Howard? After all, it's only a building. It's not the combination of holy sacrament, Indian torture, and sexual ecstasy that you seem to make of it."
"Isn't it?

When men reject reason, they have no means left for dealing with one another - except brute, physical force.