Man’s basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know. Irrationality is the rejection of man’s means of survival and, therefore, a commitment to a course of blind destruction; that which is anti-mind, is anti-life.
― The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand
To say ’I love you’ one must know first how to say the ’I.’
― The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be left waiting for us in our graves-or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.
― Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
I am, therefore I'll think.
― Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
I think, therefore I am.
― René Descartes
The highest thing in man is not his god. It's that in him which knows the reverence due a God.
― We the Living, Ayn Rand
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
― The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand
A building has integrity, just as a man and just as seldom! It must be true to its own idea, have its own form, and serve its own purpose!
― The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.
― Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
"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."
― The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?
― The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed. It is the unsacrificed self that we must respect in man above all.
― The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
"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?"
― The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
I often think that he's the only one of us who's achieved immortality. I don't mean in the sense of fame and I don't mean he won't die someday. But he's living it. I think he is what the conception really means. You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with everyday that passes. . . They change, they deny, they contradict- and they call it growth. At the end there is nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out of an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they never held for a single moment? But Howard- one can imagine him living forever.
― The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
If you want my advice, Peter," he said at last, "you’ve made a mistake already. By asking me. By asking anyone. Never ask people. Not about your work. Don’t you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?
― The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
Do you always have to have a purpose? Do you always have to be so damn serious? Can’t you ever do things without reason, just like everybody else? You’re so serious, so old. Everything’s important with you, everything’s great, significant in some way, every minute, even when you keep still. Can’t you ever be comfortable--and unimportant?
― The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don’t ask them to achieve self-respect. They will hate your soul.
― The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.
― The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
"Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us." "But I don’t think of you."
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
