Quotes by Ayn Rand

About Ayn Rand:

Ayn Rand is known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, Rand moved to the United States in 1926. She had a play produced on Broadway in 1935–1936. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful in America, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.

Ayn Rand

The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.

Ayn Rand

There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.

Ayn Rand

Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics - a rational ethics - as a precondition of rebirth.

Ayn Rand

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

Ayn Rand

A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.

Ayn Rand

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.

Ayn Rand

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.

Ayn Rand

Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.

Ayn Rand

The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.

Ayn Rand

Evil requires the sanction of the victim.

Ayn Rand

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

Ayn Rand

Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.

Ayn Rand

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.

Ayn Rand

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.

Ayn Rand

Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.

Ayn Rand

From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.

Ayn Rand

When men reject reason, they have no means left for dealing with one another — except brute, physical force.

Ayn Rand

Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence.

Ayn Rand

Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?

Ayn Rand

A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal that is worth achieving.

Ayn Rand

Author Bio

  • NameAyn Rand
  • DescriptionRussian-American novelist and philosopher
  • BornFebruary 2, 1905
  • DiedMarch 6, 1982
  • CountryUnited States Of America; Russian Empire; Soviet Union
  • ProfessionWriter; Philosopher; Novelist; Economist
  • WorksAtlas Shrugged; The Fountainhead
  • AwardsPrometheus Award; Prometheus Award - Hall Of Fame