120 quotes
Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)
Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday... The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production.
The Ayn Rand Letter (1971)
Selfishness does not mean only to do things for one's self. One may do things, affecting others, for his own pleasure and benefit. This is not immoral, but the highest of morality.
Journals of Ayn Rand (1997)
Never demand of another that which would constitute his sacrifice to you. Never grant that which would constitute your sacrifice to him.
Journals of Ayn Rand (1997)
The human race has only two unlimited capacities: one for suffering and one for lying. I want to fight religion as the root of all human lying and the only excuse for human suffering.
Journals of Ayn Rand (1997)
What they have to discover, what all the efforts of capitalism's enemies are frantically aimed at hiding, is the fact that capitalism is not merely the 'practical,' but the only moral system in history.
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)
Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it’s made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose.
Howard Roark in The Fountainhead (1996)
All the reasons which made the initiation of physical force evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.
The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)
Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
There are only two means by which men can deal with one another: guns or logic. Force or persuasion. Those who know that they cannot win by means of logic, have always resorted to guns.
Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982)
Any group or “collective,” large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members.
The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
The vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth.
Art is man's metaphysical mirror; what a rational man seeks to see in that mirror is a salute; what an irrational man seeks to see is a justification – even if only a justification of his depravity, as a last convulsion of his betrayed self-esteem.
The Romantic Manifesto (1969)
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.
The moral precept to adopt...is: Judge, and be prepared to be judged.
The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)
Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.
The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971)
One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives.
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.
The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)