120 quotes
“Free competition enforced by law” is a grotesque contradiction in terms.
A world where the thought of each man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess the thought of his neighbor.
Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead (1943)
Today, racism is regarded as a crime if practiced by a majority—but as an inalienable right if practiced by a minority.
The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971)
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.
The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey.
Anthem (1938)
Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death.
One can't love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name.
The Fountainhead (1943)
We do not hold the belief that this earth is a realm of misery where man is doomed to destruction.
Atlas Shrugged (1957)
There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971)
Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's individual value-judgments.
The Romantic Manifesto (1969)
Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration.
The Romantic Manifesto (1969)
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
The Fountainhead (1943)
Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.
The first right on earth is the right of the ego.
The Fountainhead (1943)
Some day, the world will discover that, without thought, there can be no love.
Apollo and Dionysus (1969)
To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I.
The Fountainhead (1943)
Love is our response to our highest values.
Atlas Shrugged (1957)
Don’t set out to raze all shrines—you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity—and the shrines are razed.
Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead (1996)
The worst evil that you can do, psychologically, is to laugh at yourself. That means spitting in your own face.
The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves.