Quotes by Ayn Rand

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.

— Ayn Rand

Success

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.

— Ayn Rand

Success

Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.

— Ayn Rand

Life

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

— Ayn Rand

Wisdom

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

— Ayn Rand

Wisdom

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

— Ayn Rand

Love

So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?

— Ayn Rand

Wisdom

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.

— Ayn Rand

Life

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

— Ayn Rand

Wisdom

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

— Ayn Rand

Success

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.

— Ayn Rand

Wisdom

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

— Ayn Rand

Wisdom

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.

— Ayn Rand

Wisdom

If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.

— Ayn Rand

Wisdom

Government 'help' to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.

— Ayn Rand

Wisdom

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

— Ayn Rand

Wisdom

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

— Ayn Rand

Wisdom

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.

— Ayn Rand

Wisdom

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

— Ayn Rand

Success

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.

— Ayn Rand

Love

From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.

— Ayn Rand

Wisdom

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.

— Ayn Rand

Love

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

— Ayn Rand

Wisdom

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

— Ayn Rand

Wisdom