Ayn Rand

To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.

The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another.

No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the sum of his knowledge.

The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve 'the common good.' It is true that capitalism does -- if that catch-phrase has any meaning -- but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification for capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man's rational nature, that it protects man's survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice

The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.

Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it.

When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him, by force.

The right to life is the source of all rights -- and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.

It is the basic, metaphysical fact of man's nature -- the connection between his survival and his use of reason -- that capitalism recognizes and protects.

Ask yourself why totalitarian dictatorships find it necessary to pour money and effort into propaganda for their own helpless, chained, gagged slaves, who have no means of protest or defense. The answer is that even the humblest peasant or the lowest savage would rise in blind rebellion, were he to realize that he is being immolated, not to some incomprehensible noble purpose, but to plain, naked human evil.

And what is the state but a servant and a convenience for a large number of people, just like the electric light and the plumbing system? And wouldnt it be preposterous to claim that men must exist for their plumbing, not the plumbing for the men.

A free mind and a free market are corollaries.

But Aristotle's philosophy was the intellect's Declaration of Independence.

The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive.

Creation comes before distribution -- or there will be nothing to distribute.

That which is not worth contemplating in life, is not worth recreating in art.

To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight

By what he chooses to present and by how he presents it, any author expresses his fundamental, metaphysical values.

To be the kind of writer you want to be, you must first be the kind of thinker you want to be.

Do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement.

If any part of your uncertainty, is a conflict between your heart and your mind - follow your mind.