Ayn Rand Quotes

"I can accept anthing, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between."
-Ayn Rand

"An artist does not fake reality--he *stylizes* it."
-Ayn Rand

"Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value judgments."
-Ayn Rand

"He was guilty of nothing, except that he earned his own fortune and never forgot that it was his."
-Ayn Rand

"If men want to oppose war, it is *statism* that they must oppose."
-Ayn Rand

"The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it."
-Ayn Rand in Truth quotes.

"Love is our response to our highest values. Love is self-enjoyment. The noblest love is born out of admiration of another's values."
-Ayn Rand

"It is not advisable, James, to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener."
-Ayn Rand in Opinions quotes.

"I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction."
-Ayn Rand

"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."
-Ayn Rand in Courage quotes.

"Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death."
-Ayn Rand

"Doctors are not servants of their patients, they are traders like everyone else in a free society and they should bear that title proudly considering the crucial importance of the services they offer."
-Ayn Rand

"The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind."
-Ayn Rand

"Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday...The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production."
-Ayn Rand

"A good novel is an indivisible sum; every scene, sequence and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization."
-Ayn Rand

"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplacable 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 and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to reach. The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours."
-Ayn Rand

"Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing buy rational actions."
-Ayn Rand

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other."
-Ayn Rand

"A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue. A viler evil than to throw a man into a sacrificial furnace, is to demand that he leap in, of his own will, and that he build the furnace, besides."
-Ayn Rand

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."
-Ayn Rand

"Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man's values, it has to be earned."
-Ayn Rand

"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."
-Ayn Rand

"Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values."
-Ayn Rand in Happiness quotes.

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

"To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power."
-Ayn Rand

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."
-Ayn Rand

"Art is the indespensible medium for the communication of a moral idea."
-Ayn Rand