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

Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent ...

Ayn Rand

Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire.

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 me ...

Ayn Rand

We are on strike, we, the men of the mind. We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are ...

Ayn Rand

People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been--for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy.

Ayn Rand

Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy—a joy without penalty or guilt, a...

Ayn Rand

You, whom I have always loved and never found, you whom I expected to see at the end of the rails beyond the horizon—

Ayn Rand

It is a policeman’s duty to retrieve stolen property and return it to its owners. But when robbery becomes the purpose of the law, and the policeman’s duty becomes, not protection, but the plunder of property - then it is an outlaw who has to bec...

Ayn Rand

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to re...

Ayn Rand

If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? . . . Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability.

Ayn Rand

When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer. There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unp...

Ayn Rand

The only pride of her workday was not that it had been lived, but that it had been survived. It was wrong, she thought, it was viciously wrong that one should ever be forced to say that about any hour of one's life.

Ayn Rand

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

Ayn Rand

Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.

Ayn Rand

I win by means of nothing but logic and I surrender to nothing but logic. I do not surrender my reason or deal with men who surrender theirs.

Ayn Rand

People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself fro...

Ayn Rand

She's a writer. The kind of writer who wouldn't be published outside. She believes that when one deals with words, one deals with the mind.

Ayn Rand

The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

Ayn Rand

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. T...

Ayn Rand

That's your cruelty, that's what's mean and selfish about you. If you loved your brother, you'd give him a job he didn't deserve, precisely because he didn't deserve it--that would be true love and kindness and brotherhood. Else what's love for? If a...

Ayn Rand

What is morality, she asked. Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price.

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