Ayn Rand

Do it first and feel about it afterwards.' - Dagny Taggart

Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect?" Yes." My dear fellow, who will let you?" That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?

She started off, walking fast, as if the speed of her steps could give form to the things she felt.

Through the dry phases of calculations in her mind, she noticed that she did have time to feel something: it was the hard, exhilarating pleasure of action.

It meant nothing to him any longer, only a faint tinge of sadness--and somewhere within him, a drop of pain moving briefly and vanishing, like a raindrop on the glass of a window, its course in the shape of a question mark.

You know, I think that only if one feels immensely important can one feel truly light.

Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.

Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind.

Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.

A culture is made — or destroyed — by its articulate voices.

A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.

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.

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.

An inventor is a man who asks 'Why?' of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.

My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.

We'll meet again. We'll meet when years have passed, and years make such a difference, don't they?

Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you?" He answered, "Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one.

You'd let the whole world perish rather than soil that immaculate self of yours with a single spot of which you'd have to be ashamed.

Within the extent of your knowledge, you are right.

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.

Man needs knowledge in order to survive, and only reason can achieve it; men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason, can exist only as parasites on the thinking of others.