Ayn Rand Quotes

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

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

The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves. The relationship produces nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it in reality — the man who lives to serve others — is the slave. If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit. The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. He has the merit of having resisted and of considering his condition evil. But the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man, and he degrades the conception of love. But that is the essence of altruism

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.

"Andrei, did you like the opera?"
"Not particularly."
"Andrei, do you see what you're missing?"
"I don't think I do, Kira. It's all rather silly. And useless."
"Can't you enjoy things that are useless, merely because they are beautiful?"
"No. But I enjoyed it."
"The music?"
"No. The way you listened to it."

"A Conformist is a man who declares, "It's true because others believe it" - but an Individualist is NOT a man who declares, "It's true because I believe it."
An Individual declares, "I believe it because I see in reason that it is true.

We are on strike against martyrdom — and against the moral code that demands it. We are on strike against those who believe that one man must exist for the sake of another. We are on strike against the morality of cannibals, be it practiced in body or in spirit. We will not deal with men on any terms but ours — and our terms are a moral code which holds that man is an end in himself and not the means to any end of others.

It is futile to fight against, if one does not know what one is fighting for.

Now I don’t see anything evil in a desire to make money. But money is only a means to some end. If a man wants it for a personal purpose — to invest in his industry, to create, to study, to travel, to enjoy luxury — he’s completely moral. But the men who place money first go much beyond that. Personal luxury is a limited endeavor. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to entertain, to impress others… At the price of their own self-respect. In the realm of greatest importance — the realm of values, of judgment, of spirit, of thought — they place others above self, in the exact manner which altruism demands. A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn’t need it.

Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue.

Businessmen are the one group that distinguishes capitalism and the American way of life from the totalitarian statism that is swallowing the rest of the world. All the other social groups- workers, farmers, professional men, scientists, soldiers- exist under dictatorships, even though they exist in chains, in terror, in misery, and in progressive self-destruction. But there is no such group as businessmen under a dictatorship. Their place is taken by armed thugs: by bureaucrats and commissars. Businessmen are the symbol of a free society- the symbol of America.

Compromise now, because you'll have to later, anyway, only then you'll have gone through things you'll wish you hadn't.

This is pity,” he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.

It's so graceless, being a martyr. It's honoring your adversaries too much.

And this is the whole shabby secret: to some men, the sight of an achievement is a reproach, a reminder that their own lives are irrational, and that there is no loophole - no escape from reason and reality. Their resentment is the cornered Dionysian element baring its teeth.