Quote

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.

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
Value
Creation
Objectivism
Values
Selective
Artist
Judgments
Art
Metaphysical
Reality
According
Artists
Judgment

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love - because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed value. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone
Ayn Rand
Image
Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state ' and nothing else
Ayn Rand
Image
Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgement and nothing can help you escape it - that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life.
Ayn Rand
Image
but their eyes were as cold blue glass buttons.
Ayn Rand
Image
When a man declares: There are no blacks and whites [in morality] he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: I am unwilling to be wholly good - and please don't regard me as wholly evil!
Ayn Rand
Image
The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way.
Ayn Rand
Image
There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
Ayn Rand
Image
It is not advisable to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener.
Ayn Rand
Image
Live a life as a monument to your soul.
Ayn Rand
Image
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
Image
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 fault of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell.
Ayn Rand
Image
A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.
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
Whenever anyone accuses some person of being 'unfeeling,' he means that that person is just. He means that that person has no causeless emotions and will not grant him a feeling which he does not deserve. He means that 'to feel' is to go against reason, against moral values, against reality.
Ayn Rand
Image
Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.
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
Remember that rights are moral principles which define and protect a man's freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other men.
Ayn Rand
Image
Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.
Ayn Rand
Image
Hank, this is great. Yes. He said it simply, openly. There was no flattered pleasure in his voice, and no modesty. This, she knew, was a tribute to her, the rarest one person could pay another: the tribute of feeling free to acknowledge one's own greatness, knowing that it is understood.
Ayn Rand
Image
Morally, the promise of an impossible “right” to economic security is an infamous attempt to abrogate the concept of rights. It can and does mean only one thing: a promise to enslave the men who produce, for the benefit of those who don’t.
Ayn Rand