Ayn Rand

Hypocrisy is not the hobgoblin of enslavable minds so much as it is the hallmark of their would-be slavemasters.

Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it - that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life - that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.

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

The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it.

Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.

Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel.

Any stray mediocrity rushes into print with plans to control the production of mankind

Civilization does not have to perish. The brutes are winning only by default.

DO NOT KEEP SILENT when your own ideas and values are being attacked. ...If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the default of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell.

If, in order to escape the responsibility of moral judgment, a man closes his eyes and mind, if he evades the facts of the issue and struggles not to know, he cannot be regarded as 'gray'; morally, he is as 'black' as they come.

Every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing, but it's only the degree to which he thinks that determines the degree to which he'll rise.

A gun is not an argument

Civilisation is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilisation is the process of setting men free from men

I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.

If there is any one proof of a man's incompetence, it is the stagnant mentality of a worker who, doing some small routine job in a vast undertaking, does not care to look beyond the lever of a machine, does not choose to know how the machine got there or what makes his job possible, and proclaims that the management of the undertaking is parasitical and unneccessary.

To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense.

If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and ... if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own I would refuse....I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist.

Cywilizacja to postęp ku społeczeństwu prywatności. Cała egzystencja dzikiego jest publiczna, rządzona prawami plemienia. Cywilizacja jest procesem uwalniania człowieka od człowieka.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

The question isn't who's going to let me; it's who's going to stop me.

Nie chodzi o to, kto mi pozwoli, a o to, kto mnie zatrzyma.

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.