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8e67366
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What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and the impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey?
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Ayn Rand |
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aad128f
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It is a policeman's duty to retrieve stolen property and return it to its owners. But when robbery becomes the purpose of the law, and the policeman's duty becomes, not protection, but the plunder of property - then it is an outlaw who has to become a policeman.
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property
law
society
justice
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Ayn Rand |
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3a5d049
|
I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.
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the-fountainhead
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Ayn Rand |
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766b07f
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Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
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Ayn Rand |
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4bacd4f
|
I hate incompetence. I think it's probably the only thing I do hate. But it didn't make me want to rule people. Nor to teach them anything. It made me want to do my own work in my own way and let myself be torn to pieces if necessary.
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work
the-fountainhead
incompetence
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Ayn Rand |
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bd740b4
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To me-the foulest man on earth, more contemptible than a criminal, is the man who rejects men for being too good.
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Ayn Rand |
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494f8ed
|
And suddenly, for the first time this day, we remembered that we are the damned. We remembered it, and we laughed.
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Ayn Rand |
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395c07a
|
He had to say; words were a lens to focus one's mind, and he could not use words for anything else tonight.
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Ayn Rand |
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a6a4bff
|
They professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things for which he could wish to be loved.
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Ayn Rand |
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6a4aab3
|
The trees had protected it from time and weather, and from men who have less pity than time and weather.
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Ayn Rand |
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21e5652
|
Great men can't be ruled... The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional.
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the-fountainhead
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Ayn Rand |
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d33c6f3
|
So I want to say that of all the people I have known, you are the only person I regret leaving behind.
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Ayn Rand |
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4fcfe79
|
Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.
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Ayn Rand |
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80ec2e8
|
All I mean is that a board of directors is one or two ambitious men--and a lot of ballast. I mean that groups of men are vacuums. Great big empty nothings. They say we can't visualize a total nothing. Hell, sit at any committee meeting. The point is only who chooses to fill that nothing. It's a tough battle. The toughest. It's simple enough to fight any enemy, so long as he's there to be fought. But when he isn't. . .
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collectives
incompetency
committees
nothingness
|
Ayn Rand |
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d623bd7
|
They have to take a chance, everything they do is taking a chance, but they feel so much safer when they take it on something they know to be ugly, vain and stupid.
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Ayn Rand |
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ec71317
|
Dont switch the blame to her, that's the oldest trick of all cowards
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Ayn Rand |
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97565e7
|
Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth
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Ayn Rand |
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8057b71
|
Politically, the goal of today's dominant trend is statism. Philosophically, the goal is the obliteration of reason; psychologically, it is the erosion of ambition.
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political
reason
statism
psychology
|
Ayn Rand |
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e1dbb96
|
The political function of 'the right of free speech' is to protect dissenters and unpopular minorities from forcible suppression - not to guarantee them the support, advantages, and rewards of a popularity they have not gained.
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Ayn Rand |
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b102995
|
There's nothing of any importance in life--except how well you do your work.
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Ayn Rand |
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6ec5032
|
Rationality is man's basic virtue, the source of all his other virtues. Man's basic vice, the source of all evils, is the act of unfocussing his mind, the suspension of his conciousness, 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 is anti-mind, anti-life.
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Ayn Rand |
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71f8c9c
|
This was solidarity. The debutante having her toenails pedicured - the housewife buying carrots from a pushcart - the bookkeeper who had wanted to be a pianist, but has the excuse of a sister to support - the businessman who hated his business - the worker who hated his work - the intellectual who hated everybody - all were united as brothers in the luxury of common anger that cured boredom and took them out of themselves, and they knew wel..
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Ayn Rand |
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8282dfc
|
You could tell them why they should hire you so very much better than I could. But they won't listen to you and they'll listen to me. Because I'm the middleman. The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line--it's a middleman. And the more middlemen, the shorter. Such is the psychology of a pretzel.
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Ayn Rand |
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51d17c5
|
What whip lashed them to their knees in shame and submission? The worship of the word "We." --
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Ayn Rand |
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84e205a
|
Little notes of music trembled in hesitation, and burst, and rolled in quick, fine waves, like the thin, clear ringing of glass. Little notes leaped and exploded and laughed, laughed with a full, unconditional, consummate joy. She did not know whether she was singing. Perhaps she was only hearing the music somewhere. But the music had been a promise; a promise at the dawn of her life. That which had been promised then, could not be denied t..
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Ayn Rand |
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49ca790
|
It takes two to make every great career: the man who is great, and the man-almost rarer-who is great enough to see greatness and say so.
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Ayn Rand |
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c86e676
|
To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason - Purpose - Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge - Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve - Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man's virtues, ..
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Ayn Rand |
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a2b2588
|
When facing society, the man most concerned, the man who is to do the most and contribute the most, has the least to say. It's taken for granted that he has no voice and his reasons he could offer are rejected in advance as prejudiced--since no speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgment on a man than an idea.
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Ayn Rand |
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9c5bfb1
|
A man who seeks escape from the responsibility of supporting his life by his own thought and effort, and wishes to survive by conquering, ruling and exploiting others, is NOT an Individualist.
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survive
|
Ayn Rand |
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6d7a6c2
|
I am a man who does not exist for others.
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|
Ayn Rand |
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72a1a42
|
To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She's earned it, it's a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake - and that is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity and your invaluable self-esteem.
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virtue
sacrifice
vices
|
Ayn Rand |
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54faed8
|
If you want my advice, Peter, 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?
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|
Ayn Rand |
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a7a9c6f
|
Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent.
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|
Ayn Rand |
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dd912cd
|
There was still one response, the greatest, that she had missed. She thought: To find a feeling that would hold, as their sum, as their final expression, the purpose of all the things she loved on earth... To find a consciousness like her own, who would be the meaning of her world, as she would be of his... No, not Francisco d'Anconia, not Hank Rearden, not any man she had ever met or admired... A man who existed only in her knowledge of he..
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love
|
Ayn Rand |
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52a185b
|
They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They're concerned only with people. They don't ask: 'Is this true?' They ask: 'Is this what others think is true?' Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull.
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people
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |
|
3f2f7c8
|
A man's spirit is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.
|
|
howard-roark
the-fountainhead
self
|
Ayn Rand |
|
f92ba58
|
Honest people are never touchy about the matter of being trusted.
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|
Ayn Rand. |
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0efc443
|
I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society.
|
|
howard-roark
the-fountainhead
|
Ayn Rand |
|
59d0533
|
Lillian moved forward to meet her, studying her with curiosity. They had met before, on infrequent occasions, and she found it strange to see Dagny Taggart wearing an evening gown. It was a black dress with a bodice that fell as a cape over one arm and shoulder, leaving the other bare: the naked shoulder was the gown's only ornament. Seeing her in the suits she wore, one never thought of dagny taggart's body. The black dress seemed excessiv..
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Ayn Rand |
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3bfb3c9
|
People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, comdemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked.
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|
Ayn Rand |
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ca6ad94
|
There's no such thing as a lousy job-only lousy men who don't care to do it.
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|
Ayn Rand |
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0b3ea8a
|
She stood, in a room of crumbling plaster, pressed to the window-pane, looking up at the unattainable form of everything she loved. She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.
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Ayn Rand |
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4dc222e
|
People said it because other people said it. They did not know why it was being said and heard everywhere. they did not give or ask for reasons.
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Ayn Rand |
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ebe0267
|
You'd let the whole world perish rather than soil that immaculate self of yours with a single spot of which you'd have to be ashamed.
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Ayn Rand |