Top 500 Ayn Rand Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry.”

— Ayn Rand

252. “Place nothing above the verdict of your own mind.”

— Ayn Rand

253. “Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by producing.”

— Ayn Rand

254. “The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.”

— Ayn Rand

255. “When men abandon reason, physical force becomes their only means of dealing with one another and of settling disagreements.”

— Ayn Rand

256. “Identify the dominant philosophy of a society and you can predict its future.”

— Ayn Rand

257. “Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious.”

— Ayn Rand

258. “I am interested in politics so that one day I will not have to be interested in politics.”

— Ayn Rand

259. “An artist reveals his naked soul in his work.”

— Ayn Rand

260. “To preserve one’s mind intact through a modern college education is a test of courage and endurance, but the battle is worth it and the stakes are the highest possible to man: the survival of reason.”

— Ayn Rand

261. “Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal.”

— Ayn Rand

262. “Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burnt at the stake he’d taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived and he lifted darkness from the face of the Earth.”

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

264. “Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity.”

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

266. “We the Living is not a novel ‘about Soviet Russia.’ It is a novel about Man against the State. Its basic theme is the sanctity of human life – using the word ‘sanctity’ not in a mystical sense, but in the sense of ‘supreme value.’”

— Ayn Rand

267. “Nobody has ever given a reason why men should be their brother’s keepers.”

— Ayn Rand

268. “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.”

— Ayn Rand

269. “Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves.”

— Ayn Rand

270. “Faith is the wors curse of mankind, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought.”

— Ayn Rand

271. “I saw that evil was impotent – that evil was the irrational, the blind, the anti-real – and that the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it.”

— Ayn Rand

272. “I don’t wish to be the symbol of anything. I’m only myself.”

— Ayn Rand

273. “Creation comes before distribution – or there will be nothing to distribute.”

— Ayn Rand

274. “To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. This and nothing else.”

— Ayn Rand

275. “I think it’s a sin to sit down and let your life go without making a try for it.”

— Ayn Rand

276. “Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the future – if mankind is to have a future.”

— Ayn Rand

277. “Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.”

— Ayn Rand

278. “The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.”

— Ayn Rand

279. “Believing in fate produces fate. Believing in freedom will create infinite possibilities.”

— Ayn Rand

280. “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.”

— Ayn Rand

281. “Sacrifice is the surrender of that which you value in favor of which you dont.”

— Ayn Rand

282. “I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life.”

— Ayn Rand

283. “A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition.”

— Ayn Rand

284. “As we gain knowledge, we do not become more certain, we become certain of more.”

— Ayn Rand

285. “Do not ever say that the desire to ‘do good’ by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.”

— Ayn Rand

286. “Ever since Kant divorced reason from reality, his intellectual descendants have been diligently widening the breach.”

— Ayn Rand

287. “The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.”

— Ayn Rand

288. “Don’t ever get angry at a man for stating the truth.”

— Ayn Rand

289. “The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind.”

— Ayn Rand

290. “Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality.”

— Ayn Rand

291. “The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive.”

— Ayn Rand

292. “Man cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy.”

— Ayn Rand

293. “In order to fight any issue, it is necessary to fight for something, not merely against something.”

— Ayn Rand

294. “Why no. I’m too conceited. If you want to call it that. 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.”

— Ayn Rand

295. “Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.”

— Ayn Rand

296. “Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live.”

— Ayn Rand

297. “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

298. “I dont work with collectives. I don’t consult, i don’t co-operate, I don’t collaborate.”

— Ayn Rand

299. “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.”

— Ayn Rand

300. “Do not let the hero in your soul perish...”

— Ayn Rand