Top 500 Ayn Rand Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.”

— Ayn Rand

252. “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

253. “Mysticism requires the notion of the unknowable, which is revealed to some and withheld from others; this divides men into those who feel guilt and those who cash in on it.”

— Ayn Rand

254. “I’m working to improve my methods, and every hour I save is an hour added to my life.”

— Ayn Rand

255. “Economics departments are dominated by Marxism, which is taken straight or on the rocks, in the form of Keynesianism.”

— Ayn Rand

256. “Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism.”

— Ayn Rand

257. “Political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.”

— Ayn Rand

258. “Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man’s first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.”

— Ayn Rand

259. “Don’t bother to examine a folly-ask yourself only what it accomplishes.”

— Ayn Rand

260. “But there are people who’ll try to hurt you through the good they see in you – knowing that it’s the good, needing it and punishing you for it. Don’t let it break you when you discover that.”

— Ayn Rand

261. “I say that man is entitled to his own happiness and that he must achieve it himself. But that he cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy.”

— Ayn Rand

262. “Freedom comes from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue.”

— Ayn Rand

263. “Only the man who extols the purity of love devoid of desire, is capable of the depravity of a desire devoid of love.”

— Ayn Rand

264. “Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.”

— Ayn Rand

265. “You don’t have to see through the eyes of others, hold onto yours, stand on your own judgment, you know that what is, is–say it aloud, like the holiest of prayers, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

— Ayn Rand

266. “A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry.”

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

270. “The fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.”

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

273. “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

274. “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

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

— Ayn Rand

276. “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

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

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

280. “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

281. “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

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

— Ayn Rand

283. “The more neurotic and evasive a person is, the shorter the range of his interests.”

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

287. “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

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

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

291. “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

292. “Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history’s brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind.”

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

294. “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

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

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

300. “Every honest man lives for himself. Every man worth calling a man lives for himself. The one who doesn’t – doesn’t live at all.”

— Ayn Rand