Quote

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

Ayn Rand

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ayn Rand
Age: 77 †
Born: 1905
Born: February 2
Died: 1982
Died: March 6
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Philosopher
Playwright
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
St. Petersburg
Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum
Purpose
Happiness
Objectivism
Enjoy
Suffer
Live
Morality
Life
Humor
Teach
Dies
Suffering

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time.
Ayn Rand
Image
I guard my treasures: my thoughts, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.
Ayn Rand
Image
There can be no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil.
Ayn Rand
Image
It is futile to fight against, if one does not know what one is fighting for.
Ayn Rand
Image
No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.
Ayn Rand
Image
You'd let the whole world perish rather than soil that immaculate self of yours with a single spot of which you'd have to be ashamed.
Ayn Rand
Image
A man who seeks escape from the responsibility of supporting his life by his own thought and effort, and wishes to survive by conquering, ruling and exploiting others, is NOT an Individualist.
Ayn Rand
Image
If a dedication page were to precede the total of my work, it would read: To the glory of Man.
Ayn Rand
Image
Reality confronts man with a great many musts, but all of them are conditional the formula of realistic necessity is You must, if and the if stands for man's choice
Ayn Rand
Image
The most depraved type of human being ... (is) the man without a purpose.
Ayn Rand
Image
I agree that [marriage] should be treated like a business deal. But every business deal has to have its own terms and its own kind of currency.
Ayn Rand
Image
Your emotional capacity is an empty motor, and your values are the fuel with which your mind fills it. If you choose a mix of contradictions, it will clog your motor, corrode your transmission and wreck you on your first attempt to move with a machine which you, the driver, have corrupted.
Ayn Rand
Image
In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads.
Ayn Rand
Image
I am an innovator. This is a term of distinction, a term of honor, rather than something to hide or apologize for. Anyone who has new or valuable ideas to offer stands outside the intellectual status quo. But the status quo is not a stream, let alone a 'mainstream'. It is a stagnant swamp. It is the innovators who carry mankind forward.
Ayn Rand
Image
If a man wants love he should correct his weaknesses, or his flaws, and he may deserve it. But he cannot expect the unearned, either in love or in money either in matter or in spirit.
Ayn Rand
Image
We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality
Ayn Rand
Image
Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values the bureaucrat's tool is fear.
Ayn Rand
Image
Do it first and feel about it afterwards.' - Dagny Taggart
Ayn Rand
Image
It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust but to know.
Ayn Rand
Image
To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men.
Ayn Rand