Ayn Rand

But I don't think of you. - Howard Roark

What is man? He's just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur.

Patience is always rewarded and romance is always round the corner!

When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit.

But you see," said Roark quietly, "I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.

I take no pride in hopeless longing; I wouldn't hold a stillborn aspiration. I'd want to have it, to make it, to live it.

I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach.

Never ask people about your work.

She knew that even pain can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the witness.

If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?" I…don't know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?" To shrug.

but their eyes were as cold blue glass buttons.

The sky is like a black sieve pierced by silver drops that tremble, ready to burst through.

She thought: at this moment, the glass stem between his fingers feels just like the one between mine. We have this much in common.

Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value.

Guilt is altruism's stock in trade, and the inducing of guilt is its only means of self-perpetuati on.

Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence.

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage-the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterologic al traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.

Collectivism requires self-sacrifice, the subordination of one's interests to those of others.

Collectivism is the ancient principle of savagery. ... Collectivism is not the 'New Order of Tomorrow.' It is the order of a very dark yesterday.

[Altruism] is a moral system which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the sole justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, value and virtue. This is the moral base of collectivism, of all dictatorships.

Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach.