Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Randwas a Russian-born American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism. Educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. She had a play produced on Broadway in 1935–1936. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful in America, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 February 1905
CitySaint Petersburg, Russia
CountryRussian Federation
One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor.
Don't think. Believe. Trust your heart, not your brain. Don't think. Feel. Believe.
Never ask people. Not about your work. Don't you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?
I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life.
For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors - between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.
We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality
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?
I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life.
It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust but to know.
Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.
The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration.
Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.
A culture is made — or destroyed — by its articulate voices.