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

A man doesn't borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it.

Ayn Rand

You love your work. God help you, you love it! And thats the curse. That's the brand on your forehead for all of them to see. You love it and they know it, and they know they have you. Do you ever look at the people in the street? Aren't you afraid o...

Ayn Rand

Art is inextricably tied to man's survival - not to his physical survival, but to that on which his physical survival depends: to the preservation and survival of his consciousness.

Ayn Rand

We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

Ayn Rand

Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the ...

Ayn Rand

Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's too...

Ayn Rand

America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for Ame...

Ayn Rand

Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.

Ayn Rand

Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence.

Ayn Rand

It was the only thing I ever really wanted. And that’s the sin that can’t be forgiven--that I hadn’t done what I wanted. It feels so dirty and pointless and monstrous, as one feels about insanity, because there’s no sense to it, no dignity, n...

Ayn Rand

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to ...

Ayn Rand

For the "We" must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within a man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and an unspeakable...

Ayn Rand

We are all brothers under the skin - and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.

Ayn Rand

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.

Ayn Rand

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

Ayn Rand

Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.

Ayn Rand

If this is vise I want no virtue. ... I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose. Neither ...

Ayn Rand

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together b...

Ayn Rand

And suddenly that we were laughing out loud, laughing as if there were no power left in us save laughter.

Ayn Rand

I have yet to see a genius or a hero who, if stuck with a burning match, would feel less pain than his undistinguished average brother.

Ayn Rand

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.

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