1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
2658
2659
2660
2661
2662
3346
3522
5443
5619
6757
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 5cf59e7 | There was a great satisfaction to be found in the food which we need and obtain by our own hand. | Ayn Rand | ||
| d862582 | 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. | farming land | Ayn Rand | |
| 94d8178 | 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.. | Ayn Rand | ||
| f945d90 | 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 | Ayn Rand | ||
| 178593d | You're so beautiful, Dominique. Its such a lovely accident on God's part that there's one person who matches inside and out. | dominique-francon gail-wynand the-fountainhead | Ayn Rand | |
| c115ad4 | 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. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 720f427 | 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.. | convention society | Ayn Rand | |
| d0ba59a | Listen, here's something we can do: we can look at the moon, sometimes - and, you know, it's the same moon everywhere - and we would be looking at the same thing together that way, you see? | Ayn Rand | ||
| 684609a | There is no such thing as "the right to enslave".A nation can do it , just as a man can become a criminal - but neither can do it by right. It doesn't matter in this context, whether a nation was enslaved by force (like soviet Russia), or by vote (like Nazi Germany)." | enslave rights | Ayn Rand | |
| 27d525f | We live the life of others when we read their thoughts.' --Ayn Rand | Ram Gopal Varma | ||
| 8999660 | And what is the state but a servant and a convenience for a large number of people, just like the electric light and the plumbing system? And wouldn't it be preposterous to claim that men must exist for their plumbing, not the plumbing for the men? | Ayn Rand | ||
| 43eecd3 | What books | Ursula LeGuin | ||
| b00f97c | This is said to civilized men who are to venture into countries where sacred cows are fed, while children are left to starve - where female infants are killed or abandoned by the roadside- where men go blind, medical help being forbidden by their religion - where women are mutilated, to insure their fidelity - where unspeakable tortures are ceremonially inflicted on prisoners - where cannibalism is practiced. Are these the 'cultural riches'.. | Ayn Rand | ||
| b761e91 | If you see us among scores of women, will you look upon us? We shall look upon you, Liberty 5-3000, if we see you among all the women of the earth. | love | Ayn Rand | |
| feda5f4 | A man of self respect doesn't turn into a milch cow for anybody. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 015fe08 | Do you think integrity is the monopoly of the artist? And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor's pocket? No, it's not as easy as that. If that were all, I'd say ninety-five percent of humanity were honest, upright men. Only, as you can see, they aren't. Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. That presupposes the ability to think. Thinking is something one doesn't borrow o.. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 75eda2f | In spiritual issues--(by "spiritual" I mean: "pertaining to man's consciousness")--a trader is a man who does not seek to be loved for his weaknesses or flaws, only for his virtues, and who does not grant his love to the weaknesses or the flaws of others, only to their virtues." | Ayn Rand | ||
| 667b300 | Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escap.. | evil good john-galt life man mind morality morals objectivism philosophy pursuit-of-happiness rational reason think thinking truth values virtue wisdom | Ayn Rand | |
| 0a6822d | The adversary she found herself forced to fight was not worth matching or beating; it was not a superior ability which she would have found honor in challenging; it was ineptitude--a gray spread of cotton that deemed soft and shapeless, that could offer no resistance to anything or anybody, yet managed to be a barrier in her way. | Ayn Rand | ||
| b866186 | Every achievement of man is a value in itself, but it is also a stepping-stone to greater achievements and values. Life is growth; not to move forward, is to fall backward; life remains life, only so long as it advances. Every step upward opens to man a wider range of action and achievement--and creates the need for that action and achievement. There is no final, permanent "plateau". The problem of survival is never "solved", once and for a.. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 1033084 | When man discovered how to make fire to keep himself warm, his need of thought and effort was not ended; when he discovered how to fashion a bow and arrow, his need of thought and effort was not ended; when he discovered how to build a shelter out of stone, then out of brick, then out of glass and steel, his need of thought and effort was not ended; when he moved his life expectancy from nineteen to thirty to forty to sixty to seventy, his .. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 958e313 | Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice -- and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man -- by choice; he has to hold his life as a value -- by choice; he has to learn to sustain it -- by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues -- by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality. | choice evil good john-galt life man mind morality morals objectivism philosophy pursuit-of-happiness rational reason think thinking values virtue | Ayn Rand | |
| ca467f5 | The concept of individual rights is so new in human history that most men have not grasped it fully to this day. In accordance with the two theories of ethics, the mystical or the social, some men assert that rights are a gift of God-- others, that rights are a gift of society. But, in fact, the source of rights is man's nature. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 47e7cbd | So you think money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim you product by tears, or of looters, who can take it from you .. | money money-issues morality philosophy root-of-money | Ayn Rand | |
| 7253668 | Aren't they all acting on a selfish motive--to be noticed, liked, admired?" "--by others. At the price of their own self-respect. In the realm of greatest importance--the realm of values, of judgment, of spirit, of thought--they place others above self, in the exact manner which altruism demands. A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn't need it." | selfish the-fountainhead | Ayn Rand | |
| cc62943 | It's only a matter of discovering the lever. If you learn how to rule one single man's soul, you can get the rest of mankind. It's the soul, Peter, the soul. Not whips or swords or fire or guns. That's why the Caesars, the Attilas, the Napoleons were fools and did not last. We will. The soul, Peter, is that which can't be ruled. It must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get your fingers on it--and the man is yours. You won't need a whip--he'll b.. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 2f0a100 | I refuse to apologize for my ability--I refuse to apologize for my success--I refuse to apologize for my money. | hank-rearden | Ayn Rand | |
| fef8e1d | Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on their altars. | Ayn Rand | ||
| 1b854dd | Notice how they'll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once...There's a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They've got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them--because they don't exist within him and that's the.. | independence independent the-fountainhead | Ayn Rand | |
| d9d8a21 | Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious | Ayn Rand | ||
| 84a5654 | In a rush this weekday morning, I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery where my parents are buried side by side beneath a slab of smooth granite. Then, all day, I think of him rising up to give me that look | Billy Collins | ||
| 5b7d4ca | a long time ago when cataclysms were common as sneezes and land masses slid around the globe looking for places to settle down and become continents, someone introduced us at a party. | forever forever-love love time | Billy Collins | |
| 007a3a2 | You think we're a family,' Cody said, turning back. 'You think we're some jolly, situation-comedy family when we're in particles, torn apart, torn all over the place, and our mother was a witch. | Anne Tyler | ||
| 1029bd7 | She had always assumed that when she was old, she would have total confidence, finally. But look at her: still uncertain. In many ways she was more uncertain now than she had been as a girl. And often when she heard herself speaking she was appalled at how chirpy she sounded--how empty-headed and superficial, as if she'd somehow fallen into the Mom role in some shallow TV sitcom. What on earth had happened to her? | Anne Tyler | ||
| 704214e | I write because I want to have more than one life. | Anne Tyler | ||
| 963bcde | Past is past... no it's not! People are always fond of saying that, but what's past is never past; not entirely. | life past | Anne Tyler | |
| 9b24241 | Well, in my country they say that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." "Yes, they would," Pyotr said mysteriously. He had been walking a couple of steps ahead of Kate, but now he dropped back and, without any warning, slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to his side. "But why you would want to catch flies, hah? Answer me that, vinegar girl." | Anne Tyler | ||
| 371d076 | dying, you don't get to see how it all turns out. Questions you have asked will go unanswered forever. Will this one of my children settle down? Will that one learn to be happier? Will I ever discover what was meant by such-and-such? | Anne Tyler | ||
| 72da232 | You wake in the morning, you're feeling fine, but all at once you think, "Something's not right. Something's off somewhere; what is it?" And then you remember that it's your child--whichever one is unhappy." | Anne Tyler | ||
| 34e2b37 | You ever wonder what a Martian might think if he happened to land near an emergency room? He'd see an ambulance whizzing in and everybody running out to meet it, tearing the doors open, grabbing up the stretcher, scurrying along with it. 'Why,' he'd say, 'what a helpful planet, what kind and helpful creatures.' He'd never guess we're not always that way; that we had to, oh, put aside our natural selves to do it. 'What a helpful race of bein.. | Anne Tyler | ||
| b647fe3 | For years, she had been in mourning for the way she had let her life slip through her fingers. Given another chance, she'd told herself, she would take more care to experience it. But lately, she was finding that she had experienced it after all and just forgotten, and now it was returning to her. | Anne Tyler | ||
| b5c9bf8 | Campaigns and elections are the process in which democracy separates the willing from the able, and goes with the willing. | Jon Stewart | ||
| f965754 | Often, no sooner would the mind begin to scale the heights of Mt. Knowledge than it would receive a frantic call from body base camp, demanding it return to oversee "Operation Masturbate." | masturbation | Jon Stewart | |
| 9f8907f | Each of us thinks we are the most important person, because we are inside ourselves. Does this make sense? We see the world from our eyes and hear it with our ears. I look past the branches and leaves of the trees to the sky and I see the colors I call brown and green and blue. But think, Brian, are they the same colors that you see? We may call them by the same name, but they may look different to you. "The taste of an onion, the song.. | Jerry Dubs |