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fdd9396
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We cannot say what they meant, for there are no words for their meaning, but we know it without words and we knew it then.
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Ayn Rand |
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d8fca13
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Things stood still, not a leaf trembled on the branches, while the sky slowly lost its color and became an expanse that looked like the spread of glowing water.
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Ayn Rand |
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aefca26
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The nation which once held the creed that greatness is achieved by production, is now told that it is achieved by squalor.
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Ayn Rand |
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cac242a
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sometimes, she felt pity for those countless nameless ones somewhere around them who, in a feverish quest, were searching for some answer, and in their search crushed others, perhaps even her; but she could not be crushed, for she had the answer.
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Ayn Rand |
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e67b8f1
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It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone. We have broken the laws. The laws say that men may not write unless the Council of Vocations bid them so. May we be forgiven!
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Ayn Rand |
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d3da61a
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It was a long story and the spirt which moved it was the spirit of man's freedom. But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. that is freedom. This and nothing else. ~Equality 7-2521 (as Prometheus), pg 101
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Ayn Rand |
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05c7b02
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I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth. It is my ears which hear, and ..
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Ayn Rand |
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9209d4d
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It's only a matter of getting through the next few moments, she thought: take care of the next few moments, and then the next, a few at a time, and after a while it will be easier; you'll get over it, after a while.
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Ayn Rand |
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7d4e7d9
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Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. Th..
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money
francisco-d-anconia
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Ayn Rand |
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d18533e
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There were sharp little blows in the music, and waves of quick, fine notes that burst and rolled like the thin, clear ringing of broken glass. There were slow notes, as if the cords of the violins trembled in hesitation, tense with the fullness of sound, taking a few measured steps before the leap into the explosion of laughter.
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Ayn Rand |
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c7d6e84
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Why yes, I can,' said Midas Mulligan, when he was asked whether he could name a person more evil than the man with a heart closed to pity. 'The man who uses another's pity for him as a weapon.
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positive-self-image
self-assurance
self-confidence
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Ayn Rand |
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721a4d3
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Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud--that an attempt to gain a value by deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality, where you become a pawn of their blindness, a slave of their non-thinking and their evasions, while their intelligence, their rationality, their perceptiv..
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Ayn Rand |
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056b670
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Capitalism was the only system in history where wealth was not acquired by looting, but by production, not by force, but by trade, the only system that stood for man's right to his own mind, to his work, to his life, to his happiness, to himself.
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Ayn Rand |
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b149608
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He's paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself that he's been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness--in other people's eyes. Fame, admiration, envy--all that which comes from others. Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them. Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He did..
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Ayn Rand |
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1f1cfaa
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A right doesn't include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one's own effort.
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rights
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Ayn Rand |
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9376b4d
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I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.
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Ayn Rand |
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5a5ac12
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The pursuit of truth is not important. The pursuit of that truth is important which helps you in reaching your goal that is provided you have one.
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truth
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Ayn Rand |
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a33b552
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And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.
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Ayn Rand |
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198b586
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A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn't need it.
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Ayn Rand |
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120b841
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The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial.
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Ayn Rand |
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7c50b90
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There was nothing she could say to them--nothing would be heard or answered. What were the weapons, she thought, in a realm where reason was not a weapon any longer? It was a realm she could not enter.
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Ayn Rand |
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9441099
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There was no such person as Mrs. Wayne Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the opinions of her friends, the picture post cards she had seen, the novels of country squires she had read; it was this that he had to address, this immateriality which could not hear him or answer, deaf and impersonal like a wad of cotton.
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Ayn Rand |
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322b8c8
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As a matter of fact, the person who loves everybody and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind. He expects nothing of men, so no form of depravity can outrage him.
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Ayn Rand |
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d47ed0a
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We are one in all and all in one. There are no men but only the great WE, One, indivisible and forever.
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Ayn Rand |
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a87c215
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Ethics is not a mystic fantasy--nor a social convention--nor a dispensable, subjective luxury...Ethics is an objective necessity of man's survival--not by the grace of the supernatural nor of your neighbors nor of your whims, but the grace of reality and the nature of life.
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Ayn Rand |
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80b4198
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The source of man's rights is not divine law or a congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A ___ and man is man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product for his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live..
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Ayn Rand |
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8b6011f
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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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97d548f
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It is my will which chooses, and the choice of my will is the only edict I must respect.
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Ayn Rand |
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7d29cc0
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The sacred word: EGO
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Ayn Rand |
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377afe5
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The sight of an achievement was the greatest gift a human being could offer to others.
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Ayn Rand |
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2875f3a
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Their eyes were dark and hard and glowing, with no fear in them, no kindness and no guilt.
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pride
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Ayn Rand |
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44811e3
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For this wire is as a part of our body, as a vein torn from us, glowing with our blood. Are we proud of this thread of metal, or of our hands which made it, or is there a line to divide these two?
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truth
electricity
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Ayn Rand |
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76aba46
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He had just graduated from college...and he wanted to decide whether life was worth living. He did not know that this was the question in his mind. He did not think of dying. He thought only that he wished to find joy and reason and meaning in life-and that none had been offered to him anywhere.
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Ayn Rand |
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63ae0c0
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her face lay still on the air under his face...
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Ayn Rand |
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b7ca87d
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If it were true, that old legend about appearing before a supreme judge and naming one's record, I would offer, with all my pride, not any act I committed, but one thing I have never done on this earth: that I never sought an outside sanction. I would stand and say: I am Gail Wynand, the man who has committed every crime except the foremost one: that of ascribing futility to the wonderful act of existence and seeking justification beyond my..
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Ayn Rand |
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2ce906b
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The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act--the process of reason--must be performed by each man alone.
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mind
the-fountainhead
individual
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Ayn Rand |
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c02dd82
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The shadows of leaves fall upon their arms, as they spread the branches apart, but their shoulders are in the sun. The skin of their arms is like a blue mist, but their shoulders are white and glowing, as if the light fell not from above, but rose from under their skin. We watch the leaf which has fallen upon their shoulder and it lies at the curve of their neck, and a drop of dew glistens upon it like a jewel.
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Ayn Rand |
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5cf59e7
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There was a great satisfaction to be found in the food which we need and obtain by our own hand.
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Ayn Rand |
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d862582
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The fields are black and ploughed, and they lie like a great fan before us, with their furrows gathered in some hand beyond the sky, spreading forth from that hand, opening wide apart as they come toward us, like black pleats that sparkle with thin, green spangles.
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farming
land
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Ayn Rand |
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94d8178
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But you've never wanted that. You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they're reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage. Usually in the more vulgar kind of hotels. Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose. I gave you what you wanted. I became what you are, wh..
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Ayn Rand |
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f945d90
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The businessman who wishes to gain a market by throttling a superior competitor, the worker who wants a share of his employer's wealth, the artist who envies a rival's higher talent - they're all wishing facts out of existence and destruction is the only means of their wish. If they pursue it, they will not achieve a market, a fortune, or an immortal fame - they will merely destroy production
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Ayn Rand |
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178593d
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You're so beautiful, Dominique. Its such a lovely accident on God's part that there's one person who matches inside and out.
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gail-wynand
dominique-francon
the-fountainhead
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Ayn Rand |
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c115ad4
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Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth - the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him.
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Ayn Rand |
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720f427
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He needed the people and the clamour around him. There was no questions and no doubts when he stood on a platform over a sea of faces; the air was heavy, compact, saturated with a single solvent-admiration; there was no room for anything else. He was great; great as the number of people who told him so. He was right; right as the number of people who believed it. He looked at the faces, at the eyes, he saw himself born in them, he saw himse..
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convention
society
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Ayn Rand |