Selected Ayn Rand Quotations
• I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.
• That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you. The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen -- your values and choices. That which happened by accident -- what family you were born into, in what country, and where you went to school -- is totally unimportant.
• Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned.
• That which you call your soul or spirit is your conciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.
• We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.
• Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others.
• 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.'
• The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.
• Capitalism demands the best of every man – his rationality – and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him.
• There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
• A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
• The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.
• A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.
• A gun is not an argument.
• The Middle Ages were an era of mysticism, ruled by blind faith and blind obedience to the dogma that faith is superior to reason. The Renaissance was specifically the rebirth of reason, the liberation of man's mind, the triumph of rationality over mysticism -- a faltering, incomplete, but impassioned triumph that led to the birth of science, of individualism, of freedom.
• The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendour that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach.
• Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday...The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production.
Quotes About Ayn Rand
• Nathaniel Brandon: Ayn Rand is the greatest human being who has ever lived. Atlas Shrugged is the greatest human achievement in the history of the world. Ayn Rand, by virtue of her philosophical genius, is the supreme arbiter of any issue pertaining to what is rational, moral or appropriate to man’s life on earth.
• Scott McLemee: Ayn Rand was the single most important novelist and philosopher of the 20th century. Or so she admitted with all due modesty, whenever the subject came up.
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About These Quotes
Quote collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis. Each quotation page in this collection and the entire collection © Jone Johnson Lewis 1997-2009. This is an informal collection assembled over many years. I regret that I am not be able to provide the original source if it is not listed with the quote.
Citation information:
Jone Johnson Lewis. "Ayn Rand Quotes." About Women's History. URL: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/ayn_rand.htm . Date accessed: (today). (More on how to cite online sources including this page)
