Ayn Rand

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

Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property.

Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics - a rational ethics - as a precondition of rebirth.

A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.

Evil requires the sanction of the victim.

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.

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

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.

Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.

From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.

People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk.

To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.

There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.

Rights are not a matter of numbers - and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.

Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.

The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.

It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.