1905-1982, Russian Writer, Philosopher
A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.
Ayn Rand – [Integrity]
Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.
Ayn Rand – [Arts and Artists]
Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics — a rational ethics — as a precondition of rebirth.
Ayn Rand – [Ethics]
I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.
Ayn Rand – [Customers]
Love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one's own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.
Ayn Rand – [Love]
The common good of a collective — a race, a class, a state — was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Does the fault lie in men's hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle? The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere. The believed in the perfect society reached through the guillotine and the firing squad. Nobody questioned their right to murder since they were murdering for an altruistic purpose. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. Actors change, but the course of the tragedy remains the same. A humanitarian who starts with the declarations of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that an action is good if it is unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it. The leaders of collectivist movements ask nothing of themselves. But observe the results.
Ayn Rand – [Country]
The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.
Ayn Rand – [Morality]
There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
Ayn Rand – [Coward and Cowardice]
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.
Ayn Rand – [Vision]
To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.
Ayn Rand – [Power]
Upper classes are a nation's past, the middle class its future.
Ayn Rand – [Future]
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.
Ayn Rand – [Wealth]
What is a demanding pleasure that demands the use of ones mind! Not in the sense of problem solving, but in the sense of exercising discrimination, judgment, awareness.
Ayn Rand – [Mind]