Ayn Rand (born 2 February 1905, Saint Petersburg, Russia — died 6 March 1982, Manhattan, New York, United States) was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright and screenwriter. She is best known for two of her contributions to literature: the books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
She developed her own philosophical system called Objectivism, which she defined as "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".
The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.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.A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.Freedom: to ask nothing, to expect nothing, to depend on nothing.
Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person's sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves. No matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! - an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects their deepest vision of themselves, the person whose surrender permits them to experience - or to fake - a sense of self-esteem .. Love is our response to our highest values - and can be nothing else.
Ayn Rand
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it.Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon.So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.It’s easy to run to others. It’s so hard to stand on one’s own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can’t fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge.To say "I love you" one must know first how to say the "I".
I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life.
Ayn Rand
The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.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.Love is the expression of one’s values.Have you felt it too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you- except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them; nothing, not even a sound they can recognize.The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.
People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.
Ayn Rand
I don’t wish to be the symbol of anything. I’m only myself.Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit.We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.
The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.
Ayn Rand
Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all.The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?
There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we’re not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge.
Ayn Rand
Self-respect is something that can’t be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man’s pretense at it.Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated.The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.Don't fool yourself, my dear. You're much worse than a bitch. You're a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable.Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions.The businessman’s tool is value.Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.I love you so much that nothing can matter to me – not even you…Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference.Love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores.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.Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.She knew that even pain can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the witness…I am, therefore I'll think.
The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer–because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement.
Ayn Rand
One loses everything when one loses one’s sense of humor.The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.
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.
