John Galt Quotes

Government power is always abused by seizing and perverting the law. And with few exceptions, government always determines what is law.

Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action...To remain alive, he must think.

Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us.

I want every fan of Rand to hear [Polaha] say the classic Galt phrase: “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

If there are degrees of evil, it is hard to say who is more contemptible: the brute who assumes the right to force the mind of others or the moral degenerate who grants to others the right to force his mind.

All property and all forms of wealth are produced by man's mind and labor.

I do not enter discussions with neighbors who think they can forbid me to think. I do not place my moral sanction upon a murderer's wish to kill me. When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him-by force.

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice-and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man-by choice; he has to hold his life as a value-by choice; he has to learn to sustain it-by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues-by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not.

I seek no values by means of evil, nor do I surrender my values to evil.

No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it.

Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification-that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly.

The self you have betrayed is your mind; self-esteem is reliance on one’s power to think. The ego you seek, that essential “you” which you cannot express or define, is not your emotions or inarticulate dreams, but your intellect, that judge of your supreme tribunal whom you’ve impeached in order to drift at the mercy of any stray shyster you describe as your “feeling.”

It's not that I don't suffer, it's that I know the unimportance of suffering.

A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved.

Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason is his only means to gain it.

Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man's values, it has to be earned-that of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character-that your character, your actions, your desires, your emotions are the products of the premises held by your mind.

There can be no causeless love or any sort of causeless emotion. An emotion is a response to a fact of reality, an estimate dictated by your standards.

If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but immoral when experienced by you?... Why is it immoral for your to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away?

I will stop the motor of the world.

Discard the protective rags of that vice which you called a virtue: humility. Learn to value yourself, which means: to FIGHT for your happiness, and when you learn that pride is the sum of all virtues, you will learn to live like a man.

An attempt to gain a value by deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality.

The cloven-foot of self-interest was now and then to be seen aneath the robe of public principle.

To rule without being felt…is the great mystery of policy.

As there can be no causeless wealth, so there can be no causeless love or any sort of causeless emotion.