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6236e23
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Did it ever occur to you," asked Kira, "that I may be here for the very unusual, unnatural reason of wanting to learn a work I like only because I like it?"
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Ayn Rand |
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23cba42
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I like to receive money for my work. But I can pass that up this time. I like to have people know my work is done by me. But I can pass that up. I like to have tenants made happy by my work. But that doesn't matter too much. The only thing that matters, my goal, my reward, my beginning, my end is the work itself. My work done my way. Peter, there's nothing in the world that you can offer me, except this. Offer me this and you can have anyth..
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Ayn Rand |
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fd2adb3
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but their eyes were as cold blue glass buttons.
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Ayn Rand |
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958735c
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The respectable family that supports worthless relatives or covers up their crimes in order to "protect the family name"(as if the moral stature of one man could be damaged by the actions of another) -the bum who boasts that his great-grandfather was an empire-builder, or the small-town spinster who boasts that her maternal great-uncle was a state senator and her third cousin gave a concert at carnegie hall (as if the achievement of one man..
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samples
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Ayn Rand |
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001572e
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It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth. It is my ears which hear, and the hearing of my ears gives its song to the world. It is my mind which thinks, and the judgment of my mind is the only searchlight that can find the truth. 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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6feb579
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He wanted nothing, for the time being, except to understand .... Without advice, assistance or plan, he began reading an incongruous assortment of books; he would find some passage which he could not understand in one book, and he would get another on that subject .... There was no order in his reading; but there was order in what remained of it in his mind.
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reading
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Ayn Rand |
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e6486e2
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I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.
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Ayn Rand |
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e254b6f
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I love you. As the same value, as the same expression, with the same pride and the same meaning as I love my work, my mills, my Metal, my hours at a desk, at a furnace, in a laboratory, in an ore mine, as I love my ability to work, as I love the act of sight and knowledge, as I love the action of my mind when it solves a chemical equation or grasps a sunrise, as I love the things I've made and the things I've felt, as *my* product, as *my* ..
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Ayn Rand |
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d146eed
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You don't know how hard I've tried to be left standing all by myself.
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Ayn Rand |
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86d5357
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He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it or dismiss it.
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Ayn Rand |
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166a6a2
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But this was that view of human destiny which she had most passionately hated and rejected: the view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve. Her life and her values could not bring her to that, she thought; she had never found beauty in longing for the impossible and had never found the possible to be beyond her reach.
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possibility
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Ayn Rand |
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022cf73
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They said you were hard and cold and unfeeling." "But it's true...I am, in the sense they mean--only have they ever told you in just what sense they mean it?" "What did they mean about you?" "Whenever anyone accuses some person of being 'unfeeling,' he means that that person is just. He means that that person has no causeless emotions and will not grant him a feeling which he does not deserve. He means that .'to feel' is to go against reaso..
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reason
unemotional
dagny-taggart
feel
emotions
cold
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Ayn Rand |
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dce172d
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The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who will seek them.
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Ayn Rand |
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32c0646
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There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men (pg. 101).
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Ayn Rand |
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ba15769
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He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth. 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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0293777
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Stand here, he thought, and count the lighted windows of a city. You cannot do it. But behind each yellow rectangle that climbs, one over another, to the sky - under each bulb - down to there, see that spark over the river which is not a star? - there are people whom you will never see and who are your masters. At the supper tables, in the drawing rooms, in their beds and in their cellars, in their studies and in their bathrooms. Speeding i..
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living
follower
mob-rule
masses
slave
master
leader
society
democracy
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Ayn Rand |
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1602e7b
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Any alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another isn't and can't be a right."
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Ayn Rand |
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bd3ac5a
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I love doing it. Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.
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passion
love
engineering
profession
building
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Ayn Rand |
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c0c1a0d
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The question of whether one alleges the Superiority or Inferiority of any given race is irrelevant; racism has only one psychological root: the racist's sense of his own Inferiority.
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racism
psychological
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Ayn Rand |
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787aca2
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You will follow me, if we are what we are, you and I, if we live, if the world exists, if you know the meaning of this moment and can't let it slip by, as others let it slip, into the senselessness of the unwilled and unreached.
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love
dagny-taggart
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Ayn Rand |
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4ab6f3f
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You, whom I have always loved and never found, you whom I expected to see at the end of the rails beyond the horizon--
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love
unattainable
idea
memory
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Ayn Rand |
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9973f1d
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She could not descend to an existence where her brain would explode under the pressure of forcing itself not to outdistance incompetence. She could not function to the rule of: Pipe down-keep down-slow down-don't do your best, it is not wanted!
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inspirational
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Ayn Rand |
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1296961
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The basic trouble with the modern world ... is the intellectual fallacy that freedom and compulsion are opposites. To solve the gigantic problems crushing the world today, we must clarify our mental confusion. We must acquire a philosophical perspective. In essence, freedom and compulsion are one. Let me give you a simple illustration. Traffic lights restrain your freedom to cross a street whenever you wish. But this restraint gives you the..
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Ayn Rand |
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b550802
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It is not advisable, James, to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener." | S1C5"
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Ayn Rand |
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de436fc
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But those who were young had no thought left for spring and those who still thought were not young any longer.
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Ayn Rand |
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cf2d7b7
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Racism negates two aspects of man's life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.
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racism
reason
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Ayn Rand |
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e5e4bcd
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Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.
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Ayn Rand |
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b5c5572
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Hank, this is great." "Yes." He said it simply, openly. There was no flattered pleasure in his voice, and no modesty. This, she knew, was a tribute to her, the rarest one person could pay another: the tribute of feeling free to acknowledge one's own greatness, knowing that it is understood."
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Ayn Rand |
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e76539d
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I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: "I."
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god
individual
pride
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Ayn Rand |
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b03b731
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She was twelve years old when she told Eddie Willers that she would run the railroad when they grew up. She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. to hell with that, she thought--and never worried about it again.
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Ayn Rand |
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3b3d667
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Be ugly, be God
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Ayn Rand |
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62ea85e
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Do you want me to remind you that you once swore to make my happiness aim of your life? And that you cant say in all honesty whether i am happy or unhappy, because you haven't even inquired whether i exist?
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Ayn Rand |
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5eec91c
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He watched the pain's unsummoned appearance with a cold, detached curiosity; he said to himself: Well, here it is again. He waited to see how long it would last. It gave him a strange, hard pleasure to watch his fight against it, and he could forget that it was his own suffering; he could smile in contempt, not realizing that he smiled at his own agony. Such moments were rare. But when they came, he felt as he did in the quarry: that he had..
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Ayn Rand |
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e897f54
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Sometimes after dinner, he would walk into the woods that began behind the house. He would stretch down on the ground on his stomach, his elbows, planted before him, his hands propping his chin and he would watch the patterns of veins on the green blades of grass under his face, he would blow at them and watch the blades tremble then stop again. He would roll over on his back and lie still, feeling the warmth of the earth under him. Far abo..
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Ayn Rand |
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21c5871
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If some men do not choose to think, but survive by imitating and repeating, like trained animals, the routine of sounds and motions they learned from others, never making an effort to understand their own work, it still remains true that their survival is made possible only by those who did choose to think and to discover the motions they are repeating. The survival of such mental parasites depend on blind chance; their unfocused minds are ..
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Ayn Rand |
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2df0bbe
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I am older than you. Believe me, there is no other way to live on earth. Men are not open to truth or reason. They cannot be reached by a rational argument. The mind is powerless against them. Yet we have to deal with them. If we want to accomplish anything, we have to deceive them into letting us accomplish it. Or force them. They understand nothing else. We cannot expect their support for any endeavor of the intellect, for any goal of the..
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science
truth
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Ayn Rand |
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978d923
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It's so much easier to pass judgment on a man than on an idea. Though how in hell one passes judgment on a man without considering the content of his brain is more than I'll ever understand.
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Ayn Rand |
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060abf4
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The effort he demanded of his employees was hard to perform; the effort of himself was hard to believe.
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Ayn Rand |
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47a6e4e
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The three of them set out every morning on adventures of their own kind. Once, an elderly professor of literature, Mrs. Taggart's friend, saw them on top of a pile in a junk yard, dismantling the carcass of an automobile. He stopped, shook his head and said to Francisco, 'A young man of your position ought to spend his time in libraries, absorbing the culture of the world.' 'What do you think I'm doing?' asked Francisco.
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Ayn Rand |
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d5bf916
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p.61 He [Roark] was usually disliked, from the first sight of his face, anywhere he went. His face was closed like the door of a safety vault; things locked in safety vaults are valuable; men did not care to feel that. He was a cold, disquieting presence in the room; his presence had a strange quality: it made itself felt and yet it made them feel that he was not there; or perhaps that he was and they weren't.
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Ayn Rand |
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1d1435a
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My dearest one, it is not proper for men to be without names. There was a time when each man had a name of his own to distinguish him from all other men. So let us choose our names. I have read of a man who lived many thousands of years ago, and of all the names in these books, his is the one I wish to bear. He took the light of the gods and brought it to men, and he taught men to be gods. And he suffered for his deed as all bearers of ligh..
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Ayn Rand |
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f1d5fda
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I love you, Dominique. I love you so much that nothing can matter to me--not even you. Can you understand that? Only my love--not your answer. Not even your indifference.
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love
gail-wynand
the-fountainhead
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Ayn Rand |
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05c8b7a
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I want to sleep with you. Now, tonight, and at any time you may care to call me. I want your naked body, your skin. your mouth, your hands...--I want you like an animal...or a whore.
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want
love
dominique-francon
howard-roark
the-fountainhead
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Ayn Rand |
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3d70115
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Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire...They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, be..
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greatness
mediocrity
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Ayn Rand |