Quotes on Objectivism

To say 'I love you' one must first be able to say the 'I.'

Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.

Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.

I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

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

To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.

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.

Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.

There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority.

I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.