Ayn Rand

If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and … if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own I would refuse….I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being’s right to exist.

The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

Come to me, wild and untamed. Bring the oceans on your lips, the mountains on your spine; I want to explore all the places you have ever called home. Let me pluck each petal from the gardens you’ve grown, overcrowded seedlings pushing up through your bones. Come to me dipped in the stars, come to me wearing all your scars. I want to show you just how beautiful you are.

Unless you know who you are, you will always be vulnerable to what people say.

One of the hardest things for a parent to have to do is to tell your children that your other parent has died.

Sometimes you have to make the right decision, and sometimes you have to make the decision right.

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.

Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what’s more than enough.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

I am one of the people who love the why of things.

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

If you don’t know what it is you want – and I mean specifically – then you won’t even know when you have it.

Every one of us have things that we believe about ourselves when nobody else is looking, nobody else is listening, nobody else is monitoring what we’re doing. We believe things about ourselves.

I don’t expect to retire. Every man must work, that’s his natural destiny.

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

First we make our habits, then our habits make us.

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.