Quote

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.

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
Oneself
Confess
Reality
Arrive
Mind
Realm
Thinking
Realms
Contradiction
Error
Maintain
Errors
Abdicate

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
Love is our response to our highest values.
Ayn Rand
Image
To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I.’ The meaning of the ‘I’ is an independent, self-sufficient entity that does not exist for the sake of any other person. A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite. The love of a parasite is worth nothing.
Ayn Rand
Image
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.
Ayn Rand
Image
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.
Ayn Rand
Image
There's nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.
Ayn Rand
Image
Love is our response to our highest values. Love is self-enjoyment. The noblest love is born out of admiration of another's values.
Ayn Rand
Image
Capitalism demands the best of every man - his rationality - and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him.
Ayn Rand
Image
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.
Ayn Rand
Image
Let me be the child in the story and declare that the Emperor is naked — or that America is culturally bankrupt.
Ayn Rand
Image
That which is not worth contemplating in life, is not worth recreating in art.
Ayn Rand
Image
Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious
Ayn Rand
Image
You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
Ayn Rand
Image
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren
Ayn Rand
Image
A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race - and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.
Ayn Rand
Image
Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: 'Account Overdrawn.'
Ayn Rand
Image
America's founding Ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more - and nothing less.
Ayn Rand
Image
I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need?
Ayn Rand
Image
My greatest personal mistake is ever to allow a word or moment that “doesn’t count,” i.e., that I do not refer to my own basic principles. Every word, every action, every moment counts. (This is the pattern on which everybody makes mistakes [or] becomes irrational — not relating their one action or one conviction to another.
Ayn Rand
Image
He, too, stood looking at her for a moment - and it seemed to her that it was not a look of greeting after an absence, but the look of someone who had thought of her every day of that year. She could not be certain, it was only an instant, so brief that just as she caught it, he was turning.
Ayn Rand
Image
If a drought strikes them, animals perish--man builds irrigation canals if a flood strikes them, animals perish--man builds dams if a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish--man writes the Constitution of the United States.
Ayn Rand