Ayn Rand

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

“I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.” (Pg25)

“…Those parvenus who preach originality for its own sake, which attitude is only ignorant vanity.” (Pg 27)

“People were his protection against people.” (Pg 72)

“What you’re doing – it’s yours, not mine, I can only teach you to do it better.”

(Pg 76)

“…That merely by living through their own obscure days his readers were representing and achieving all the highest objectives of any civilization.” (Pg 77)

“A great building is not the private intention of some genius or other. It is merely a condensation of the spirit of a people.” (Pg 78)

“What is heroic about me?”

“Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. It’s not what you do. It’s what you make people feel around you.” (Pg 89)

“History, my friends, does not ask questions or acquiescence. It is irrevocable, as the voice of the masses that determine it.” (Pg 109)

“If I found a job, a project an idea or a person that I wanted – I’d have to depend on the whole world. Everything has strings leading to everything else…accept.” (Pg 143)

“You know, it’s such a peculiar thing – our idea of mankind in general. We all have a sort of vague, glowing picture when we say that, something solemn, big and important. But actually all we know of it is the people we meet in our lifetime.” (Pg 143)

“There’s some good in the worst of us. There’s always a redeeming future.” (Pg. 144)

“You know, I never open again any great book I’ve read and loved. It hurts me to think of the other eyes that have read it and of what they were.” (Pg 144)

“Nothing’s really sacred but a sense of humor.” (Pg 232)

“A thing is not high if one can reach it; it is not great if one can reason about it; it is not deep if one can see its bottom.” (Pg 233)

“One must never allow oneself to acquire an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance. There’s no necessity to burden oneself with absolutes.” (Pg 242)

“I refuse to be an accomplice in the manufacturing of martyrs.” (Pg 244)

“There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything.” (Pg 264)

“There’s nothing important on Earth, except human beings. There’s nothing as important about human beings as their relations to one another.” (Pg 265)

“What is kinder – to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility beyond their endurance – or to see them as they are, and accept it because it makes them comfortable?” (Pg 277)

“It’s good to suffer. Don’t complain. Bear, bow, accept – and be grateful that God has made you suffer. For this makes you better than the people who are laughing and happy. If you don’t understand this, don’t try to understand. Everything bad comes from the mind, because the mind asks too many questions. It is blessed to believe, not to understand.” (Pg 298)

“Genius is an exaggeration of dimension. So is elephantiasis. Both may be only a disease. We are all brothers under the skin – and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.” (Pg 305)

“It’s so much easier to pass judgment on a man than on an idea. Though how in hell one passes judgment on a man without considering the content of his brain is more than I’ll ever understand.” (Pg 312)

“The shortest distance between to points is not a straight line – it’s a middleman.” (Pg 313)

“Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.” (Pg 313)

“I often think that he’s the only one of us who’s achieved immortality. I don’t mean in the sense of fame and I don’t mean that he won’t die someday. But he’s living it. I think he is what the conception really means. You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with every day that passes. When you meet them, they’re not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict – and they call it growth. At the end there’s nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out on an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they never held for a single moment?” (Pg 452)

“And may we be damned if greatness must reach us through fraud.” (Pg 512)

“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.” (Pg 512)

“What you feel in the presence of a thing you admire is just one word – ‘Yes.’ The affirmation, the acceptance, the sign of admittance. And that ‘yes’ is more than an answer to one thing, it’s a kind of ‘amen’ to life, to the earth that holds this thing, to the thought that created it, to yourself being able to see it. But the ability to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is the essence of all ownership. It’s your ownership of your own ego, your soul, if you wish. Your soul has a single basic function – the act of valuing. ‘Yes’ or ‘no,’  ‘I wish’ or ‘I do not wish.’ You can’t say ‘Yes’ without saying ‘I.’ There’s no affirmation without the one who affirms. In this sense, everything to which you grant your love is yours.” (Pg 539)

“All I know is, unselfishness is the only moral principle. The noblest principle and a sacred duty and much more important than freedom. Unselfishness is the only way to happiness. I would have everybody who refused to be unselfish shot. To put them out of their misery. They can’t be happy anyway.” (Pg 554)

“If everybody were compelled to have the proper kind of education, we’d have a better world. If we force people to do good, they will be free to be happy.” (Pg 555)

“The daily life of the common man is as much a work of art in itself as the best Shakespearean tragedy.” (Pg 557)

“Change is the basic principle of the universe. Everything changes. Seasons, leaves, flowers, birds, morals, men and buildings.” (Pg 567)

“One loses everything when one loses one’s sense of humor.” (Pg 573)

“I don’t think a man can hurt another, not in any important way.” (Pg 574)

“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?” (Pg 577)

“Before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. The work, not the people. Your own action, not any possible object of your charity.” (Pg 578)

“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.” (Pg 598)

“I don’t wish to be the symbol of anything. I’m only myself.” (Pg 602)

“Motives never alter facts.” (Pg 603)

“It’s what I couldn’t understand about people for a long time. They have no self. They live within others. They live second hand.” (Pg 605)

“A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn’t need it.” (Pg 606)

“It’s easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement.” (Pg 606)

“Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched.” (Pg 607)

“If one doesn’t respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others.” (Pg 607)

“If this boat were sinking, I’d give my life to save you. Not because it’s any kind of duty. Only because I like you, for reasons and standards of my own. I could die for you. But I couldn’t and wouldn’t live for you.” (Pg 607-608)

“To what level of depravity has a society descended when it condemns a man simply because he is strong and great?” (Pg 623)

“It is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed. It is the unsacrificed self that we must respect in man above all.” (Pg 624)

“Hell is said to be paved with good intentions.”

“Could it be because we’ve never learned to distinguished what intentions constitute the good? Is it not time to learn? Never have there been so many good intentions so loudly proclaimed in the world. And look at it.” (Pg 624-625)

“If you learn how to rule one single man’s soul, you can get the rest of mankind.” (Pg 635)

“Everything enjoyable from cigarettes to sex to ambition to the profit motive, is considered depraved or sinful. Just prove that a thing makes men happy – and you’ve damned it.” (Pg 636)

“It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.” (Pg 637)

“They say sound never dies, but travels on in space – what happens to a man’s heartbeats?” (Pg 642)

“The most indecent sight on earth, a pawn shop window. The things which had been sacred to men, and the things which had been precious, surrendered to the sight of all, to the pawing and the bargaining, trash to the indifferent eyes of strangers.” (Pg 658)

“You were a ruler of men. You held a leash. A leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends.” (Pg 660)

“One cannot hate the earth in their name. The earth is beautiful. And it is a background, but not theirs.” (Pg 666)

“Even pain can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the witness, yet they could let each other see it without need of protection.” (Pg 668)

“Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon.” (Pg 679)

“We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared of transferred.” (Pg 679)

“The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite’s concern is the conquest of men.” (Pg 679)

“The egotist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not function through them. He is not concerned with them in any primary matter.” (Pg 681)

“Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive.” (Pg 683)

Anthem - Ayn Rand

“We wish nothing, save to be alone and to learn, and to feel as if with each day our sight were growing sharper than the hawk’s and clearer than rock crystal.” (Pg 36)

“Strange are the ways of evil.” (Pg 36)

“The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who will seek them.” (Pg 52)

“They will see, understand and forgive. For our gift is greater than our transgression.” (Pg 61)

“What is not thought by all men cannot be true.” (Pg 73)

“What is not done collectively cannot be good.” (Pg 73)

“Men have no cause to exist save in toiling for other men.” (Pg 74)

“Now, we cannot speak, for we cannot understand.” (Pg 80)

“Let us forget their good and our evil, let us forget all things save that we are together and that there is joy as a bond between us.” (Pg 83)

“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, then what is good and what is evil?” (Pg 85)

“I am. I think. I will.” (Pg 94)

“This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.” (Pg 94)

“Many words have been granted me, and some are wise and some are false, but only three are holy: ‘I will it!’” (Pg 95)

“My happiness is not the means to an end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.” (Pg 95)

“I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man’s soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.” (Pg 96)

“Our son will be raised as a man. He will be taught to say “I” and to bear the pride of it. He will be taught to walk straight and on his own feet. He will be taught reverence for his own spirit.” (Pg 100)

“I look upon the history of men, which I have learned from the books, and I wonder. It was a long story, and the spirit which moved it was the spirit of man’s freedom. But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man’s freedom from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom.” (Pg 101)

“The word which will not die, should we all perish in battle. The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory. The sacred word: EGO.” (Pg 105)

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

“That’s the trouble with you. You always make it ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ Things are never absolute like that. Nothing is absolute.” (Pg 29)

“He never felt loneliness except when he was happy.” (Pg 35)

“…quiet feeling that made him smile at the countryside in the darkness and wonder why happiness could hurt.” (Pg 36)

“Pain was not a valid reason for stopping.” (Pg 36)

“Happiness was the greatest agent of purification.” (Pg 37)

“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.” (Pg 37)

“He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy.” (Pg 37)

“All you give us is money. Have you ever given us any time?” (Pg 40)

“They professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things for which he could wish to be loved.” (Pg 42-43)

“He could not condemn them without understanding; and he could not understand.” (Pg 43)

“When people are unanimous, how does one man dare to dissent.” (Pg  49)

“Friendships are more valuable than gold.” (Pg 51)

“People who are afraid to sacrifice somebody have no business talking about a common purpose.” (Pg 51)

“But there were times, like tonight, when she felt that sudden, peculiar emptiness, which was not emptiness, but silence, not despair, but immobility, as if nothing within her were destroyed, but everything stood still.” (Pg 67)

“Joy is one’s fuel.” (Pg 67)

“Nothing can give them the right to turn men into sacrificial animals. Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can’t be punished for being good. One can’t be penalized for ability. If that is right, then we’d better start slaughtering one another, because there isn’t any right at all in the world!” (Pg 79)

“This, she knew, was a tribute to her, the rarest one person could pay another: the tribute of feeling free to acknowledge one’s own greatness, knoing that it is understood.” (Pg 86)

“Whatever we are, it’s we who move the world and it’s we who’ll pull it through.” (Pg 88)

“Two things were impossible to him: to stand still or to move aimlessly.” (Pg 93)

“It seems to me that there are other things in the world.”

“Let others think about them.” (Pg 94)

“When I die, I hope to go to heaven – whatever the hell that is – and I want to be able to afford the price of admission.” (Pg 94)

“You ought to discover some day that words have an exact meaning.” (Pg 94)

“The purpose of philosophy is not to help men find the meaning of life, but to prove to them that there isn’t any.” (Pg 127)

“We must control men in order to force them to be free.” (Pg 127)

“Right is whatever’s good for society.” (Pg 130)

“If one’s actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not.” (Pg 140)

“What’s the use anyway? What is man’s fate? Hasn’t it always been to hope, but never to achieve? The wise man is the one who does not attempt to hope.” (Pg 146)

“Nobody can tell what the course of a country’s future may be. It is not a matter of calculable trends, but a chaos subject to the rule of the moment, in which anything is possible.” (Pg 177)

“When we deal with people, considerations other than truth enter the question.” (Pg 179)

“Men are not open to truth or reason. They cannot be reached by a rational argument. The mid is powerless against them. Yet we have to deal with them.  If we want to accomplish anything, we have to deceive them into letting us accomplish it. Or force them. They understand nothing else.” (Pg 180)

“You are an unusual, brilliant child who has not seen enough of life to grasp the full measure of human stupidity.” (Pg 181)

“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.” (Pg 188)

“You’re the most immoral man living – you think of nothing but justice! You don’t feel any love at all!” (Pg 196)

“Virtue is the giving of the undeserved.” (Pg 197)

“You don’t know what you’re saying. I’m not able ever to despise you enough to believe that you mean it.” (Pg 197)

“Thought is a weapon one uses in order to act.” (Pg 201)

“There is an obscenity of evil which contaminates the observer. There is a limit to what is proper for a man to see.” (Pg 202)

“She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.” (Pg 206)

“Reason is the most naïve of all superstitions.” (Pg 214)

“Every report on facts is only somebody’s opinion. It is, therefore, useless to write about facts.” (Pg 215)

“It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust, but to know.” (Pg 225)

“Wasn’t it evil to wish without moving – or to move without aim? Whose malevolence was it that crept through the world, struggling to break the two apart and set them against each other?” (Pg 226)

“I’ve never had a chance to be what I’m like – except tonight.” (Pg 234)

“I read a book once where it said that great men are always unhappy, and the greater – the unhappier. It didn’t make sense to me. But maybe it’s true.” (Pg 243)

“If she enjoys it, what is there to admire about her doing it?” (Pg 246)

“I mean, we’re only human beings – and what’s a human being? A weak, ugly, sinful creature, born that way, rotten in his bones – so humility is the one virtue he ought to practice. He ought to spend his life on his knees, begging to be forgiven for his dirty existence. When a man thinks he’s good – that’s when he’s rotten. Pride is the worst of all sins, no matter what he’s done.” (Pg 248)

“A man is part of his community, he’s got a right to count on it, hasn’t he?” (Pg 254)

“Every man learns in his own way and time.” (Pg 258)

“She could not function to the rule of: Pipe down – keep down – slow down – don’t do your best, it is not wanted!” (Pg 281)

“That’s the cruelty of conscientious people. You wouldn’t understand it – would you? – if I answered that real devotion consists of being willing to lie, cheat and fake in order to make another person happy – to create for him the reality he wants, if he doesn’t like the one that exists.” (Pg 284)

“To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She’s earned it, it’s a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake – and that is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity and your invaluable self-esteem.” (Pg 284-285)

“If men learned to love one another, it would solve all their problems.” (Pg 290)

“Any enlightened person knows that man is made by the material factors of his background, and that a man’s mind is shaped by his tools of production.” (Pg 298)

“Who can pass judgment on another man’s suffering and on the limit of what he can bear?” (Pg 299)

“Action is man’s foremost obligation, regardless of anything he feels.” (Pg 311)

“Thought is a primitive superstition. Reason is an irrational idea. The childish notion that we are able to think has been mankind’s costliest error.” (Pg 316)

“The more we know, the more we learn that we know nothing.” (Pg 316)

“I don’t think the strong should have the right to wound the self-esteem of the weak.” (Pg 328)

“Words are relative. They’re only symbols. If we don’t use ugly symbols, we won’t have any ugliness. Why do you want me to say things one way, when I’ve already said them another.” (Pg 337)

“There can be no justification for a society in which a man is expected to manufacture the weapons for his own murderers.” (Pg 339)

“You’re so serious about everything – particularly yourself.” (Pg 358)

“Everyone agrees that anything you do is good, so long as it’s not for yourself.” (Pg 361)

“It takes no kindness to respect a man who deserves respect – it’s only a payment which he’s earned. To give an unearned respect is the supreme gesture of charity.” (Pg 361)

“You think that if one gets hurt in life, it’s through one’s own sins – and that’s true, in the long run. But there are people who’ll try to hurt you through the good they see in you – knowing that it’s the good, needing it and punishing you for it. Don’t let it break you when you discover that.” (Pg 364)

“Man exists for the achievement of his desires.” (Pg 369)

“The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.” (Pg 383)

“Wisdom lies in knowing when you remember and when to forget.” (Pg 401)

“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 for men to live without breaking laws.” (Pg 404)

“If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders – what would you tell him to do?”

“I…don’t know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?”

“To shrug.” (Pg 422)

“I think that the only real moral crime that one man can commit against another is the attempt to create, by his words or actions, an impression of the contradictory, the impossible, the irrational, and thus shake the concept of rationality in his victim.” (Pg 452)

“There aren’t any obligations, except the necessity of the moment.” (Pg 472)

“There’s no such thing as the intellect. A man’s brain is a social product. A sum of influences that he’s picked up from those around him.” (Pg 499)

“She was glad that a face she had liked belonged to a man she could admire.” (Pg 521)

“My only love, the only value I care to live for, is that which has never been loved by the world, has never won recognition or friends or defenders: human ability. That is the love I am serving – and if I should lose my life, to what better purpose could I give it.” (Pg 535)

“I’ll tell you that I have no hope left, but I have the knowledge that when the end comes, I will have lived by my own standards, even while I was the only one to whom they remained valid. I will have lived in the world in which I started and I will go down with the last of it.” (Pg 537)

“Man does not and need not live by reason.” (Pg 546)

“The only effective means to impel men to action was fear.” (Pg 547)

“Your fate depends not on what you have or have not done, but on whom you do or do not know.” (Pg 550)

“We’re on a dead planet, like the moon, where we must move, but dare not stop for a breath of feeling or we’ll discover that there is no air to breathe.” (Pg 579)

“He looked as if so much brutality had confronted him that he had given up the attempt to understand, to trust or to expect anything.” (Pg 605)

“I don’t think I’d mind it much now, the dying. I know it would be a lot easier. Only I think that it’s a sin to sit down and let your life go, without making a try for it.” (Pg 606)

“There’s no surer way to destroy a man than to force him into a spot where he has to aim at not doing his best, where he has to struggle to do a bad job, day after day.” (Pg 609-610)

“When all the decent pleasures are forbidden, there’s always ways to get the rotten ones.” (Pg 610)

“When one deals with words, one deals with the mind.” (Pg 660)

“I’m richer now than I was in the world. What’s wealth but the means of expanding one’s life? There’s two ways one can do it: either by producing more of by producing it faster. And that’s what I’m doing: I’m manufacturing time.” (Pg 662)

“What greater wealth is there than to own your life and spend it on growing?” (Pg 663)

“I’ve always been short on time in my life, never on what to use it for.” (Pg 665)

“There was no meaning in motors or factories or trains, that their only meaning was in man’s enjoyment of his life, which they served.” (Pg 670)

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” (Pg 670)

“It is not happiness, but suffering that we consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that we regard as the abnormal exception in human life.” (Pg 696)

“Every form of happiness is one, every desire is driven by the same motor – by our love for a single value, for the highest potentiality of our own existence – and every achievement is an expression of it.” (Pg 704)

“I do not care for blindness in any form, I have too much to show – or for deafness, I have too much to say. I do not care to be admired by anyone’s heart – only by someone’s head.” (Pg 717)

“Every man builds his world in his own image.” (Pg 725)

“We are those who do not disconnect the values of their minds from the actions of their bodies, those who do not leave their values to empty dreams but bring them into existence, those who give material form to thoughts and reality to values.” (Pg 781)

“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim, what I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked.” (Pg 787-788)

“The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on.” (Pg 788)

“Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence. Ask yourself which, of the two, are the unfeeling persons. And then you’ll see what motive is the opposite of charity.” (Pg 814)

“It’s not that I don’t suffer, it’s that I know the unimportance of suffering. I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one’s soul and as a permanent scar across one’s view of existence.” (Pg 878)

“Love is not something to argue and reason and bargain about! It’s something to give! To feel!” (Pg 890)

“I’d like to live, God knows how I’d like to! Not because I’m dying…but because I’ve just discovered it tonight, what it means, really to be alive…” (Pg 908)

“Men would shudder if they saw a mother bird plucking the feathers from the wings of her young, then pushing him out of the nest to struggle for survival – yet that was what they did to their children.” (Pg 911)

“For centuries…he must think.” (Pg 926, Paragraphs 1-4)

“There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence.” (Pg 926)

“Man has no…most of history.” (Pg 927, Paragraph 4)

“A living entity that regarded its means of survival as evil, would not survive. A plant that struggled to mangle its roots, a bird that fought to break its wings would not remain for long in the existence they affronted. But the history of man has been a struggle to deny and to destroy his mind.” (Pg 927)

“All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil.” (Pg 927)

“By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man – every man – is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose. “ (Pg 928)

“Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge and reason is his only means to gain it. Reason is the faculty that perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by his senses. The task of his senses is to give him the evidence of existence, but the task of identifying it belongs to his reason; his senses tell him only that something is, but what it is must be learned by his mind.” (Pg 930)

“By refusing to say ‘It is,’ you are refusing to say ‘I am.’ By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: ‘Who am I to know?’ – he is declaring ‘Who am I to live.’” (Pg 931)

“Justice is… of existence.” (Pg 933, Paragraph 2)

“Pride is the… of others.” (Pg 934, Paragraph 2)

“Happiness is not… of a producer” (Pg 935, Paragraph 3)

“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.” (Pg 946)

We The Living - Ayn Rand

“When your country is in agony, you don’t seek frivolous recreations.” (Pg 36)

“Society is a stupendous whole.”

“If you write a whole line of zeroes, it’s still – nothing.” (Pg 42)

“Such had been… battle march.” (Pg 51, Paragraph 5)

“Don’t ever look back. The past is dead. But there is always a future.” (Pg 78)

“There is no such thing as duty. If you know that a thing is right, you want to do it. If you don’t want to do it – it isn’t right. If it’s right and you don’t want to do it – you don’t know what right is and you’re not a man.” (Pg 89)

“Don’t you know that there are things, in the best of us, which no outside hand should dare to touch? Things sacred because, and only because, one can say ‘This is mine’? Don’t you know that we live only for ourselves, the best of us do, those who are worthy of it? Don’t you know that there is something in us which must not be touched by any state, by any collective, by any number of millions?” (Pg 89)

“I loathe your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved. Because men are not equal in ability and one can’t treat them as if they were.” (Pg 90)

“Can’t you enjoy things that are useless, merely because they are beautiful?” (Pg 98)

“If our souls met – yours and mine – they’d fight to the death. But after they had torn each other to pieces, to the very bottom, they’d see that they had the same root.” (Pg 117)

“You see, you and I, we believe in life. But you want to fight for it, to kill for it, even to die – for life. But I only want to live it.” (Pg 117)

“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.” (Pg 144)

“Nature makes mistakes and takes chances; it mixes its colors and knows little of straight lines.” (Pg 241)

“All those things, they have no meaning for anyone on earth but me, and when I’ve lived a life where every hour had to have a purpose, and suddenly I discover what it’s like to feel things that have no purpose but myself, and I see suddenly how sacred a purpose that can be, so that I can’t even argue, I can’t doubt, I can’t fight it, and I know, then, that a life is possible whose only justification is my own joy then everything, everything else suddenly seems very different to me.” (Pg 277)

“I’ve never had many questions to face in my life. People create their own questions, because they’re 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.” (Pg 278)

“The highest thing in a man is not his god. It’s that in him which knows the reverence due a god.” (Pg 335)

“There’s your life. You begin it, feeling that it’s something so precious and rare, so beautiful that it’s like a sacred treasure. Now it’s over, and it doesn’t make any difference to anyone, and it isn’t that they are indifferent, it’s just that they don’t know, they don’t know what it means; that treasure of mine, and there’s something about it that they should understand. I don’t understand it myself, but there’s something that should be understood by all of us. Only what is it? What?” (Pg 350)

“The survival of the fittest. However, not all philosophers are right. I’ve always wanted to ask them one question: the fittest – for what?” (Pg 397)

“What do you think is alive in me? Why do you think I’m alive? Because I have a stomach and eat and digest the food? Because I breathe and work and produce more food to digest? Or because I know what I want, and that something which knows how to want – isn’t that life itself? And who – in this damned universe – who can tell me why I should live for anything but for that which I want?” (Pg 404)

“We thought everything that breathed knew how to live. Does it? And aren’t those who know how to live, aren’t they too precious to be sacrificed in the name of any cause? What cause is greater than those who fight for it? And aren’t those who know how to fight, aren’t they the cause itself and not the means?” (Pg 408)

“Aren’t you living for yourself and only for yourself? Call it your aim, your love, your cause – isn’t it still your cause? Give your life, die for your ideal – isn’t it still your ideal? Every honest man lives for himself. Every man worth calling a man lives for himself. The one who doesn’t – doesn’t live at all. You cannot change it. You cannot change it because that’s the way man is born, alone, complete, an end in himself.” (Pg 408)

“You cannot enslave man’s mind, you can only destroy it.” (Pg 408)

“Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.” (Pg 464)

The Early Ayn Rand

“The motive and purpose of my writing is the projection of an ideal man. The portrayal of a moral ideal, as my ultimate literary goal, as an end in itself…” (Pg 3)

“’Man-worship’ means the enraptured…on earth.” (Pg 4)

“When a woman with this …reverence and sexuality.” (Pg 4-5)

“The answer to communism, Ayn Rand held, is the recognition of man’s right to exist – to exist by his own mind and for his own sake, sacrificing neither himself to others nor others to himself.” – Leonard Peikoff (Pg 150)

“There are things that are normal and comfortable and easy, and that’s most of life for all of us. And then there are also things above it, things so much more than human, and not many can bear it and then not often, but that’s the only reason for living at all. Things that make you very quiet and still and it’s difficult to breathe. Can I explain that to the people who’ve never seen it?” (Pg 459-460 – Vesta Dunning)

“Dear God, let me be stupid! Let me be dishonest! Let me be contemptible! Just once. Because I must.” (Pg 507 – The Simplest…)

The Husband I Bought - Ayn Rand

“You must not show a man that he is your whole life.” (Pg 13)

“I paid a terrible price to life, but I had known a terrible happiness. The price was not too high. It was just. For those days had been, they were, and they were mine.” (Pg 14)

“Once a person has lost hope, its return is more cruel than the most terrible tortures.” (Pg 22)

“You must be happy, and strong, and glorious. Leave suffering to those that cannot help it. You must smile at life… And never thing about those that cannot. They are not worthwhile.” (Pg 35)

“Women, girls, everyone that shall hear me, listen to this: don’t love somebody beyond limits and consciousness. Try to have always some other aim or duty. Don’t love beyond your very soul…if you can, I cannot.” (Pg 39)

“One has to live as long as one is not dead.” (Pg 39)

Her Second Career - Ayn Rand

“There’s no one in this business with an honest idea of what’s good and what’s bad. And there’s no one who’s not scared green of having such an idea for himself. They’re all sitting around waiting for someone to tell them. Begging someone to tell them. Anyone, just so they won’t have to take the awful responsibility of judging and valuing on their own.” (Pg 118)

Red Pawn - Ayn Rand

“The only sin is to miss the things you want most in life. If they’re taken from you, you have to reclaim them – at any price.” (Pg 161)

“Don’t you know that it’s much harder sometimes to stand by and remain silent than to act?” (Pg 177)

“Nothing can extinguish the torch of human progress!” (Pg 181)

“One cannot be a traitor to anything except to oneself.” (Pg 192)

“Loyalty is like rubber, one can stretch it so far, and then – it snaps.” (Pg 192)

“Man has lost sight of beauty. There is a great beauty on this earth of ours. A beauty ones spirit can approach only bare-headed. But how many of us ever get a glimpse of it?” (Pg 196)

Kira’s Viking - Ayn Rand

“To a life which is a reason unto itself.” (Pg 240)

Ideal - Ayn Rand

“A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry.” (Pg 244)

“We cannot face a crisis without a system.” (Pg 250)

“You know how it is: when you’re very young, there’s something ahead of you, so big that you’re afraid of it, but you wait for it and you’re so happy waiting. Then the years pass and it never comes. And then you find, one day, that you’re not waiting any longer. It seems foolish, because you didn’t even know what it was you were waiting for.” (Pg 264)

“You see, I’m not unhappy at all. In fact, I’m a very happy man – as happiness goes. Only there’s something in me that knows of a life I’ve never lived, the kind of live no one has ever lives, but should.” (Pg 275)

“Who ever gets a chance at the… the very best possible to him? We all bargain. We take the second best. That’s all there is to be had.” (Pg 275)

“There are some men with a purpose in life. Not many, but there are. And there are also some with a purpose – and with integrity. These are very rare. I like them.” (Pg 286)

“An artist tells. He does not explain.” (Pg 294)

“It’s an incurable disease, you know – to have faith in the better spirit of man.” (Pg 314)

Think Twice - Ayn Rand

“One can judge a man best by his friends.” (Pg 343)

“When you get something for nothing – you always find a string attached somewhere.” (Pg 359)

“Why is it that the people who worry most about mankind have the least concern for any actual human being?” (Pg 362)

“If you spend your time helping people, you’ve got to have people to help. If everybody were independent, what would happen to the people who’ve got to help everybody?” (Pg 392)

“You don’t know what a ghastly weapon kindness can be. When you’re up against an enemy, you can fight him. But when you’re up against a friend, a gentle, kindly, smiling friend – you turn against yourself. You think that you’re low and ungrateful. It’s the best in you that destroys you.” (Pg 395)

“We can protect ourselves against men who would do us evil. But God save us from the men who would do us good!” (Pg 430)