Tag | Ayn Rand
A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.
The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.
Upper classes are a nation’s past; the middle class is its future.
To say “I love you” one must know first how to say the “I”.
A man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress.
The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.
Charity must be voluntary.
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.
If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.
To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.
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.
To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that’s real power.
So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?
The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.
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.
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.
Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.
Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.
The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.
My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.
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.
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.
The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.
Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.
I could die for you. But I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, live for you.
Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.
Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue.
If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.
The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.
Let us destroy, but don’t let us pretend that we are committing an act of virtue.
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.
Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason.
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.
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.
I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals and I loathe humanity for its failure to live up to these possibilities.
The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.
Let us throw away our candles and our torches. Let us flood the cities with light. Let us bring a new light to men!
