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
Because, you see, God—whatever anyone chooses to call God—is one's highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it.
An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.
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.
Civilization is the process of setting man free from 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.
[S]tatism is a system of institutionalized violence and perpetual civil war. It leaves men no choice but to fight to seize political power -- to rob or be robbed, to kill or be killed. ... Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production.
Living in a society, instead of on a desert island, does not relieve a man of the responsibility of supporting his own life.
Religion is a primitive form of philosophy, [the] attempt to offer a comprehensive view of reality.
It is morally obscene to regard wealth as an anonymous, tribal product and to talk about 'redistributing' it.
To be the kind of writer you want to be, you must first be the kind of thinker you want to be.
The end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.
One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.
Politically, the goal of today’s dominant trend is statism. Philosophically, the goal is the obliteration of reason; psychologically, it is the erosion of ambition.
I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire.