Quotes by Ayn Rand

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.

To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.

To say "I love you" one must first be able to say the "I."

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.

When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.

The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.

Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason.

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started.

People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk.

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.

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.

The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.

The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.

Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.

Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.

Evil requires the sanction of the victim.

Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.