Ayn Rand Quotes

“'Free competition enforced by law' is a grotesque contradiction in terms.”

“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.”

“A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.”

“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.”

“A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: It holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.”

“A gun is not an argument.”

“An artist reveals his naked soul in his work.”

“Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness.”

“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves – or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.”

“Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death.”

“Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others.”

“Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”

“Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.”

“I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.”

“I started my life with a single absolute: That the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.”

“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.”

“I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals and I loathe humanity for its failure to live up to these possibilities.”

“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.”

“If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”

“In the temple of his spirit, each man is alone.”

“Learn to value yourself, which means: Fight for your happiness.”

“Live a life as a monument to your soul.”

“Man’s unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.”

“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.”

“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.”

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.”

“That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you. The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen – your values and choices. That which happened by accident – what family you were born into, in what country, and
where you went to school – is totally unimportant.”

“The Arabs are one of the least developed cultures. They are typically nomads. Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it’s the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are.”

“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.”