Quotes By Ayn Rand

When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.

Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.

Government "help" to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.

There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.

It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.

The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.

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

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.

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.

Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.

Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started.

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.

So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?

Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics - a rational ethics - as a precondition of rebirth.

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.

Rights are not a matter of numbers - and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.

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

Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

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

If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.

People create their own questions because they are 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.