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Ayn Rand Quotes - Page 30

All Quotes Acceptance Achievement Acting Addiction Age Ambition Architecture Art Atheism Atheist Authority Being Happy Bill Of Rights Business Challenges Change Character Charity Children Choices Church Competition Compromise Conflict Consciousness Corruption Country Courage Creation Crime Culture Death Dedication Desire Dignity Duty Earth Economics Economy Effort Ego Egoism Emptiness Energy Eternity Ethics Evil Failing Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Free Market Freedom Frustration Funny Future Genius Giving Giving Up Gold Greatness Greed Guilt Hallmark Happiness Hate Hatred Heart History Home Honesty Honor House Humanity Hurt Identity Independence Individualism Individuality Insanity Inspiration Inspirational Inspiring Integrity Joy Judgement Judgment Justice Justification Kindness Knowledge Leadership Leaving Liberty Life Literature Live Life Logic Loneliness Love Lust Lying Mankind Mediocrity Money Morality Morning Motivation Motivational Obedience Objectivism Pain Passion Past Peace Perception Persuasion Philosophy Politics Power Pride Progress Property Property Rights Purpose Racism Reading Reality Recognition Recovery Religion Responsibility Running Sacrifice School Self Confidence Self Esteem Self Respect Selfishness Shame Sin Sleep Socialism Society Soul Struggle Stupidity Style Success Suffering Surrender Survival Talent Time Today Tolerance Trust Truth Tyranny Understanding Values Virtue Vision Waiting War Weakness Wealth Winning Wisdom Work Worship Writing

There are no little people in America. There are only people, equal before the law, yearning to breathe free and wanting to achieve the best within them.

There are no little people in America. There are only people, equal before the law, yearning to breathe free and wanting to achieve the best within them.

Law, America, People

The American businessmen, as a class, have demonstrated the greatest productive genius and the most spectacular achievements ever recorded in the economic history of mankind. What reward did they receive from our culture and its intellectuals? The position of a hated, persecuted minority. The position of a scapegoat for the evils of the bureaucrats.

Business, Class, Evil

Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.74, Penguin

There are no contradictions. If you find one, check your premises.

Contradiction, Checks, Premises

And that night we knew that to hold the body of women in our arms in neither ugly nor shameful, but the one ecstasy granted to the race of men.

Night, Men, Race

Ayn Rand (2016). “Anthem”, p.40, Xist Publishing

Emotions are not tools of cognition. They tell you nothing about the nature of reality.

Reality, Cognition, Tools

An idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol.

Character, Mean, Simple

Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.289, Penguin

Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof. A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of feeling with knowledge.

Commitment, Feelings, Tools

Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.34, Penguin

There is a fundamental moral difference between a man who sees his self-interest in production and a man who sees it in robbery. The evil of a robber does not lie in the fact that he pursues his own interests, but in what he regards as to his own interest; not in the fact that he pursues his values, but in what he chose to value; not in the fact that he wants to live, but in the fact that he wants to live on a subhuman level.

Lying, Men, Self

Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.81, Penguin

America's skyscrapers were not built by public funds nor for a public purpose: they were built by the energy, initiative and wealth of private individuals for personal profit. And, instead of impoverishing the people, these skyscrapers, as they rose higher and higher, kept raising the people's standard of living - including the inhabitants of the slums.

America, Rose, People

He never felt lonliness except when he was happy.

Lonliness, Felt

I understood that centuries of chains and lashes will not kill the spirit of man nor the sense of truth within him.

Men, Spirit, Century

Ayn Rand (2016). “Anthem”, p.48, Xist Publishing

The best, most natural dialogue is usually written as if the writer is listening to dictation. You might get stuck on any particular point and have to question yourself; but normally, dialogue writes itself.

Writing, Listening, Might

Ayn Rand (2000). “The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers”, p.74, Penguin

The art of writing is the art of doing what you think you're doing. This is not as simple as it sounds. It implies a very difficult undertaking: the necessity to think. And it implies the requirement to think out three separate, very hard problems: What is it you want to say? How are you going to say it? Have you really said it?

Art, Writing, Simple

The pressure disappeared with the first word he put on paper. He thought--while his hand moved rapidly--what a power there was in words; later, for those who heard them, but first for the one who found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier. He thought, perhaps the basic secret the scientists have not discovered, the first fount of life, is that which happens when a thought takes shape in words.

Healing, Hands, Secret

Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.828, Penguin

i cannot be called upon to know a negative or to prove a negative. if there is a god and you prove it, that's fine. but you don't tell me you can't know that there isn't. i would say yes i know there isn't because i have been given no evidence.

If There Is A God, Negative, Given

I am speaking to those among you who have retained some sovereign shred of their soul, unsold and unstamped: '- to the order of others'. If, in the chaos of the motives that have made you listen to the radio tonight, there was an honest, rational desire to learn what is wrong with the world, you are the man whom I wished to address. By the rules and terms of my code, one owes a rational statement to those whom it does concern and who are making an effort to know. Those who are making an effort to fail to understand me, are not a concern of mine.

Men, Order, Effort

Ayn Rand (2005). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.1006, Penguin

The men of the press, who despised their own profession, did not know why they were enjoying it today. One of them, a young man with years of notorious success behind him and a cynical look of twice his age, said suddenly, 'I know what I'd like to be: I wish I could be a man who covers news!'

Success, Men, Years

Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.182, Hamilton Books

Abortion is a moral right-which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her body?

Abortion, Wish, Matter

Ayn Rand (1990). “The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought”, p.64, Penguin

The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves.

Men, Live For Others, Fountainhead

Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.74, Penguin

They had rejected the soul-body dichotomy, with its two corollaries: the impotence of man's mind and the damnation of this earth; they had rejected the doctrine of suffering as man's metaphysical fate, they proclaimed man's right to the pursuit of happiness and were determined to establish on earth the conditions required for man's proper existence, by the "unaided" power of their intellect.

Fate, Pursuit Of Happiness, Men

I am an intransigent atheist, though not a militant one. This means that I am not fighting against religion - I am fighting for reason.

Atheist, Mean, Fighting

Are my characters copies of people in real life? ... Don't ever believe the stories about authors putting people into novels. That idea is a kind of joke on both authors and readers. All the readers believe that authors do it. All the authors know that it can't be done.

Real, Believe, Character

Ayn Rand (1997). “Letters of Ayn Rand”, p.249, Penguin

You don't build for the way people live, but for the way they should live. I don't write about people as they are, but as they could be and should be.

Writing, People, Way

Ayn Rand (1997). “Letters of Ayn Rand”, p.135, Penguin

The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory. The sacred word: EGO.

Heart, Self, Ego

Ayn Rand (2016). “Anthem”, p.51, Xist Publishing

For centuries, the mystics of spirit had existed by running a protection racket - by making life on earth unbearable, then charging you for consolation and relief, by forbidding all the virtues that make existence possible, then riding on the shoulders of your guilt, by declaring production and joy to be sins, then collecting blackmail from the sinners.

Running, Joy, Religion

Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.124, Penguin

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