62 Truly Inspiring Ayn Rand Quotes

Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum profoundly known as Ayn Rand was a Russian American writer and a philosopher. She was born and educated in Russia. She moved to the United States in 1926. She started her career by writing short stories, plays, and screenplays. Ayn is best known for her novel Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. She rejected faith and religion and advocated reason as the only mean of acquiring knowledge. She rejected altruism and supported rational and ethical egoism. She was very influential among libertarians and American conservatives.

Rand became politically active in the 1940s and worked with her husband as a full-time volunteer for the Presidential campaign of Republican Wendell Willkie. She enjoyed the public speaking during the campaign as it made her interact with other intellectuals who were sympathetic to free-market capitalism.

Rand took seven years to write her novel “The Fountainhead” which brought fame and financial stability to her. It was a romantic and philosophical novel and centered on an uncompromising young architect. Initially, it was rejected by twelve publishers and finally got accepted by the Bob Merrill company. Let’s have a look at some aspiring quotes from the fountainhead.

20 Ayn Rand; The Fountainhead Quotes

1. “Rules?” said Roark. “Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determines the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it’s made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn’t borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn’t borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it.” – Ayn Rand

2. “I hate incompetence. I think it’s probably the only thing I do hate. But it didn’t make me want to rule people. Nor to teach them anything. It made me want to do my own work in my own way and let myself be torn to pieces if necessary.”

3. “Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important – what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right – so long as it’s not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic – and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don’t know. I’ve never known it. I’d like to understand.”

4. “I like to receive money for my work. But I can pass that up this time. I like to have people know my work is done by me. But I can pass that up. I like to have tenants made happy by my work. But that doesn’t matter too much. The only thing that matters, my goal, my reward, my beginning, my end is the work itself. My work done my way. Peter, there’s nothing in the world that you can offer me, except this. Offer me this and you can have anything I’ve got to give. My work done my way. A private, personal, selfish, egotistical motivation. That’s the only way I function. That’s all I am.”

5. “I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.”

6. “I love you, Dominique. I love you so much that nothing can matter to me—not even you. Can you understand that? Only my love—not your answer. Not even your indifference.”

7. “The crowd would have forgiven anything, except a man who could remain normal under the vibrations of its enormous collective sneer.”

8. “They talked about nothing in particular, sentences that had meaning only in the sound of the voices, in warm gaiety, in the ease of complete relaxation.”

9. “I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society.”

10. “You love your work. God help you, you love it! And thats the curse. That’s the brand on your forehead for all of them to see. You love it and they know it, and they know they have you. Do you ever look at the people in the street? Aren’t you afraid of them? I am. They move past you and they wear hats and they carry bundles. But that’s not the substance of them. The substance of them is hatred for any man who loves his work. That’s the only kind they fear. I don’t know why.”

11. “A man’s spirit is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.”

12. “I don’t make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse to measure myself as part of anything. I’m an utter egotist.”

13. “…Aren’t they all acting on a selfish motive—to be noticed, liked, admired?” “—by others. At the price of their own self-respect. In the realm of greatest importance—the realm of values, of judgment, of spirit, of thought—they place others above self, in the exact manner which altruism demands. A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn’t need it.”

14. “Men hate passion, any great passion. Henry Cameron made a mistake : he loved his work. That was why he fought. That was why he lost.”

15. “She wondered why her normal desire to say little, to hold things closed, broke down before him, why she felt compelled to simple frankness, such as she could offer no one else.”

16. “The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man’s first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men.”

17. “The unrecognized genius—that’s an old story. Have you ever thought of a much worse one—the genius recognized too well? … That a great many men are poor fools who can’t see the best—that’s nothing. One can’t get angry at that. But do you understand about the men who see it and don’t want it?”

18. “You’re the most egotistical and the kindest man I know. And that doesn’t make sense.” “Maybe the concepts don’t make sense. Maybe they don’t mean what people have been taught to think they mean.”

19. “The human spirit. The heroic in man. The aspiration and the fulfillment, both. Uplifted in its quest–and uplifting by its own essence. Seeking God–and finding itself. Showing that there is no higher reach beyond its own form….”

20. “Roark, floating like a piece of driftwood, held power greater than that of the engine in the belly of the yacht. Wynand thought: Because that is the power from which the engine has come.”

Atlas Shrugged was another masterpiece by Rand published in 1957. The novel advocates Rand’s theory of objectivism and expresses her point of view on human achievement. The novel is based on romance, mystery, and science fiction. Atlas Shrugged became the world’s best seller. Let’s dig into some interesting dialogues from Atlas Shrugged to understand the depth of the novel.

20 Ayn Rand; Atlas Shrugged Quotes

1. “Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.”

2. “If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”

3. “People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…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.”

4. “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.”

5. “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.”

6. “If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders – What would you tell him?”

7. “Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”

8. “Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.”

9. “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.”

10. “She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.”

11. “I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach.”

12. “Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.”

13. “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.”

14. “There is no such thing as a lousy job – only lousy men who don’t care to do it.”

15. “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.”

16. “If one’s actions are honest; one does not need the predated confidence of others.”

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

18. “What is man? He’s just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur.”

19. “It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.”

20. “Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.”

9 Ayn Rand Quote on Objectivism

Rand developed her own philosophical system called Objectivism. She believed that a man is a heroic being whose only moral purpose of life is his own happiness along with productive achievement as his noble activity and reason is his only absolute.

1. “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.”

2. “Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”

3. “Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.” “I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach.”

4. “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.”

5. “Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?”

6. “I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.”

7. “Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.”

8. “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.”

9. “I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not a success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.”

6 Ayn Rand Quotes on Rationalism

1. “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.”

2. “A rational process is a moral process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest—but if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”

3. “Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions.”

4. “In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them.”

5. “Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice—and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man—by choice; he has to hold his life as a value—by choice; he has to learn to sustain it—by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues—by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality”

6. “To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love – because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, un betrayed value. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone”

7 Any Rand Motivational Quotes on Ethics

1. “Ethics is an objective, metaphysical necessity of man’s survival.”

2. “There’s nothing of any importance in life — except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It’s the only measure of human value.”

3. “The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.”

4. “There can be no compromise on moral principles.”

5. “Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.”

6. “The cult of moral grayness is a revolt against moral values.”

7. “Morality is a code of black and white. When and if men attempt a compromise, it is obvious which side will necessarily lose and which will necessarily profit.”

Ayn Rand Quotes on Egoism

Ayn Rand states, “I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.”

10 Best Ayn Rand Quotes Images in 2022

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Summary

Ayn Rand belonged to a Jewish family and later turned atheist. Most of her publications were controversial and faced pre-publication issues. Her ideologies were objectionable to many. What do you think about Ayn Rand’s ideologies and quotes? Let us know your opinion on Ayn Rand.