Explore Quotes by Ayn Rand

Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism.

Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it?

Love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one's own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.

This is the age othe common man, they tell us-a title which any man may claim to the extent osuch distinction as he has managed not to achieve.

Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by producing.

Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death.

If you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty.

The government was set to protect man from criminals, and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government.

Creation comes before distribution - or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.

Since there is no such entity as 'the public,' since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.

I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals.

The doctrine that 'human rights' are superior to 'property rights' simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others.

You must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences.

Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. Virtue is the act by which one aims and/or keeps it.

Words are a lens to focus one's mind.

Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers — show me yours — show me that it is possible — show me your achievement — and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.

Ethics is a code of values which guide our choices and actions and determine the purpose and course of our lives.

There's nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.

She sat leaning back in her chair, looking ahead, knowing that he was as aware of her as she was of him. She found pleasure in the special self-consciousness it gave her. When she crossed her legs, when she leaned on her arm against the window sill, when she brushed her hair off her forehead - every movement of her body was underscored by a feeling the unadmitted words for which were: Is he seeing it?

I am interested in politics so that one day I will not have to be interested in politics.

One can't love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name.