Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged Quotes
Reason is your means of survival — so that for you, who are a human being, the question ‘to be or not to be’ is the question 'to think or not to think..'.
Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
...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.
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.
The statue was of a young man with a tall, gaunt body and an angular face. He held his head as if he faced a challenge and found joy in his capacity to meet it.
He did not know that he was expected to attempt to buy his way into society and that they anticipated the pleasure of rejecting him. He had no time to notice their disappointment.
...there can be no justification for a society in which a man is expected to manufacture the weapons for his own murderers.
You, whom I have always loved and never found, you whom I expected to see at the end of the rails beyond the horizon—
What’s wealth but the means of expanding one’s life? There’s two ways one can do it: either by producing more or by producing it faster.
If, to him, love was a celebration of one’s self and of existence—then, to the self-haters and life-haters, the pursuit of destruction was the only form and equivalent of love.
The justice which would forgive miles of innocent errors of knowledge, would not forgive a single step taken in conscious evil.
Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not recognize such duty. Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider need a claim. Do not cry that you own us. You don’t.
