Ayn Rand quotes are a great way to start the day. They provide a dose of inspiration and motivation, and remind you of what’s important in life.
Ayn Rand was born on February 2, 1905, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. She was a novelist, philosopher, and screenwriter. She was known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Rand was a strong advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, and her philosophy, Objectivism, has been highly influential in modern libertarianism. Rand was also a controversial figure, due to her outspoken political views and her staunch defense of individualism. Despite this, she has been praised for her creativity, intellectualism, and interesting life story.
Ayn Rand had a profound influence on American conservatism. She was one of the first writers to present a comprehensive philosophy that defended laissez faire capitalism and individualism. Her philosophy, called Objectivism, argued that the only moral course was to pursue one’s own self-interest. This view was in direct contrast to the dominant view in American politics at the time, which held that it was the duty of the government to promote the common good.
Rand’s ideas found a receptive audience in the early 1960s, when conservatism was in its ascendancy. American conservatives were disillusioned with the New Deal, which they saw as a violation of the Constitution and an overreach of the federal government. Rand’s philosophy of laissez faire capitalism and individualism offered a way to rein in the federal government and return to the principles of the Founding Fathers.
Rand‘s influence on American conservatism has been profound. Many of the most important conservative thinkers, including Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, were influenced by her work. Her philosophy has also shaped the thinking of American politicians.
Here are some of our favorite Ayn Rand quotes.
Ayn Rand Quotes
- “if any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.”
2. “The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.”
3. “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.”
4. “Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.”
5. “One loses everything when one loses one’s sense of humor.”
6. “Why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world–to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.”
7. “Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”
8. “Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.”
9. “There is no such thing as a lousy job – only lousy men who don’t care to do it.”
10. “Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.”
11. The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.
12. “My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.”
13. “Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.”
14. “If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”
15. “I could die for you. But I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, live for you.”
Most Famous Ayn Rand Quotes
16. I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
17. “The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it.”
18. “You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated”
19. “What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can’t stand still. It must grow or perish.”
20. “The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”
21. “But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself.”
22. “I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.”
23. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.”
24. “Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment’s torture.”
25. “She knew that even pain can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the witness…”
26. “In this world, either you’re virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.”
27. “A man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress.”
28. “Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.”
29. “You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated.”
30. “To say “I love you” one must know first how to say the “I”.”
31. “The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”
Inspiring Ayn Rand Quotes
32. “Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.”
33. “I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life.”
34. A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.”
35. “What is man? He’s just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur.”
36. “Love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores.”
37. “To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul – would you understand why that’s much harder?”
38. “He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see.”
39. “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.”
40. “Self respect is something that can’t be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man’s pretense at it.”
Thought-Provoking Ayn Rand Quotes
41. I don’t wish to be the symbol of anything. I’m only myself.”
42. “I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals and I loathe humanity for its failure to live up to these possibilities.”
43. “If one’s actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others.”
44. “Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.”
45. “I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.”
46. “Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon.”
47. “There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we’re not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge.”
48. “Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.”
49. “The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.”
50. “I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach.”
51. “Never ask people about your work.”
52. “There’s no way to rule innocent men. 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.”
53. “Patience is always rewarded and romance is always round the corner!”
54. “Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?”
55. “The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.”
56. “Don’t fool yourself, my dear. You’re much worse than a bitch. You’re a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable.”
57. “Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer – and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.”
58. “Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character.”
59. “Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be left waiting for us in our graves-or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.”
60. “Within the extent of your knowledge, you are right.”
61. “Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched”.”
62. “Is it advisable to spread out all the conveniences of culture before people to whom a few steps up a stair to a library is a sufficient deterrent from reading?”
63. “Don’t think. Believe. Trust your heart, not your brain. Don’t think. Feel. Believe.”
64. “Guilt is a rope that wears thin.”
65. “A man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions…. He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer–because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement.”
66. “Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions.”
67. “It’s not that I don’t suffer, it’s that I know the unimportance of suffering. I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one’s soul and as a permanent scar across one’s view of existence.”
68. “It is not advisable to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener.”
69. “There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. ”
70. “Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.”
71. “I take no pride in hopeless longing; I wouldn’t hold a stillborn aspiration. I’d want to have it, to make it, to live it.”
72. “Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants.”
73. “Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.”
74. “When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit.”
75. “Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.”
76. “People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too … Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose.”
77. “She thought how strange it would be if she ever said ‘Hello’ to him. One did not greet oneself each morning.”
78. “We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one’s happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.”
79. “Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy–a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind’s fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer.”
80. “No speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It’s so much easier to pass judgement on a man than on an idea.”
81. “We are all brothers under the skin – and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.”
82. “Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.”