Ayn Rand Quotes

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.

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.

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

I don’t build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.

A businessman cannot force you to buy his product; if he makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences; if he fails, he takes the loss. If bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences; if he fails, he passes the loss on to you.

The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other – until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country’s official ideology.

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

The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.

When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.

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

Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.

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

To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel.