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Ayn Rand
135 quotes
“I hope you will understand my hesitation in writing to one whom I admire as the greatest representative of a philosophy to which I want to dedicate my whole life.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to H.L. Mencken July 28, 1934.
“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.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is only one thing that matters and that we'll remember. The rest doesn't matter. I don't care what life is to be nor what it does to us. But it won't break us. Neither you nor me. That's our only weapon. That's the only banner we can hold against all those others around us. That's all we have to know about the future.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The highest thing in a man is not his god. It's that in him which knows the reverence due a god. You are my highest reverence.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist. She smiled, her last smile, to so much that had been possible.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am. I think. I will.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.'”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds, I am not a sacrifice on their altars.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before...The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of spirit.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the temple of his spirit, each man is alone.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is not good to feel too much joy, nor to be glad that our body lives. For we matter not and it must not matter to us whether we live or die, which is to be as our brothers will it. But we, Equality 7-2521, are glad to be living. If this is a vice, then we wish no virtue.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No single one can possess greater wisdom than the many scholars who are elected by all the men for their wisdom. Yet we can. We do. We have fought against saying it, but now it is said. We do not care. We forget all men, all laws and all things save our metals and our wires. So much is still to be learned! So long a road lies before us, and what care we if we must travel it alone!”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An individualist is a man who says: "I'll not run anyone's life – nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule nor be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone – nor sacrifice anyone to myself.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Textbook of Americanism (1946).
“Free competition enforced by law” is a grotesque contradiction in terms.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Antitrust: The Rule of Unreason," The Objectivist Newsletter (February 1962) p. 1
“I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introducing Objectivism" The Objectivist Newsletter Vol. 1, No. 8. (August 1962). p. 35.
“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Foreign Policy Drains U.S. of Main Weapon," Los Angeles Times, September 9 1962, G2 — as reported in The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z (1986)
“I believe that women are human beings. What is proper for a man is proper for a woman. The basic principles are the same. I would not attempt to prescribe what kind of work a man should do, and I would not attempt it in regard to women. There is no particular work, which is specifically feminine. Women can choose their work according to their own purpose and premises in the same manner as men do.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I regard compassion as proper only toward those who are innocent victims, but not toward those who are morally guilty. If one feels compassion for the victims of a concentration camp, one cannot feel it for the torturers. If one does feel compassion for the torturers, it is an act of moral treason toward the victims.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not only the post office, but streets, roads, and above all, schools, should all be privately owned and privately run. I advocate the separation of state and economics. The government should be concerned only with those issues, which involve the use of force. This means: the police, the armed services, and the law courts to settle disputes among men. Nothing else. Everything else should be privately run and would be much better run.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never describe my position in terms of negatives. I am an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, of individual rights—there are no others—of individual freedom. It is on this g round that I oppose any doctrine which proposes the sacrifice of the individual to the collective, such as communism, socialism, the welfare state, fascism, Nazism and modern liberalism.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you say, do I think that Objectivism will be the philosophy of the future, I would say yes, but with this qualification: If men turn to reason, if they are not destroyed by dictatorship and precipitated into another Dark Ages, if men remain free long enough to have time to think, then Objectivism is the philosophy they will accept.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And if you ask me, what is greatness? – I will answer, it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is man worth it? What else is worth anything?”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I say “capitalism,” I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism—with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive by any random means, as a parasite, a moocher or a looter, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment—so he is free to seek his happiness in any irrational fraud, any whim, any delusion, any mindless escape from reality, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment nor to escape the consequences.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence—to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poverty, ignorance, illness and other problems of that kind are not metaphysical emergencies. By the metaphysical nature of man and of existence, man has to maintain his life by his own effort; the values he needs—such as wealth or knowledge—are not given to him automatically, as a gift of nature, but have to be discovered and achieved by his own thinking and work.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When one observes the nightmare of the desperate efforts made by hundreds of thousands of people struggling to escape from the socialized countries of Europe, to escape over barbed-wire fences, under machine-gun fire—one can no longer believe that socialism, in any of its forms, is motivated by benevolence and by the desire to achieve men's welfare.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that there is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights.” No human rights can exist without property rights.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Capitalism is the only system where such men are free to function and where progress is accompanied, not by forced privations, but by a constant rise in the general level of prosperity, of consumption and of enjoyment of life.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Observe, in politics, that the term extremism has become a synonym of "evil," regardless of the content of the issue (the evil is not what you are extreme about, but that you are "extreme"—i.e., consistent).”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression “individual rights” is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today's intellectual chaos). But the expression “collective rights” is a contradiction in terms.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man's rights can be violated only by the use of physical force. It is only by means of physical force that one man can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing his own goals, or compel him to act against his own rational judgment.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any group or “collective,” large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When a man declares: "There are no blacks and whites [in morality]" he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: "I am unwilling to be wholly good—and please don't regard me as wholly evil!”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Errors of knowledge are not breaches of morality; no proper moral code can demand infallibility or omniscience.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage—the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race—and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendor that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All the reasons which made the initiation of physical force evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The moral precept to adopt...is: Judge, and be prepared to be judged.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ask yourself why totalitarian dictatorships find it necessary to pour money and effort into propaganda for their own helpless, chained, gagged slaves, who have no means of protest or defense. The answer is that even the humblest peasant or the lowest savage would rise in blind rebellion, were he to realize that he is being immolated, not to some incomprehensible noble purpose, but to plain, naked human evil.”
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source