Quotes By Ayn Rand

God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive.

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.

From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.

To say "I love you" one must first be able to say the "I."

Evil requires the sanction of the victim.

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.

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

Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.

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?