Quote

A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.

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
Existed
Eternity
Exist
Moment
Moments
Matter
Life
Undefeated

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
A 'whim' is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause.
Ayn Rand
Image
It is the basic, metaphysical fact of man's nature -- the connection between his survival and his use of reason -- that capitalism recognizes and protects.
Ayn Rand
Image
All the evils, abuses, and iniquities, popularly ascribed to businessmen and to capitalism, were not caused by an unregulated economy or by a free market, but by government intervention into the economy.
Ayn Rand
Image
There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we’re not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge.
Ayn Rand
Image
You don't build for the way people live, but for the way they should live. I don't write about people as they are, but as they could be and should be.
Ayn Rand
Image
It was the joy of admiration and of one's own ability, growing together.
Ayn Rand
Image
The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.
Ayn Rand
Image
Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion. To declare that “everybody is white” or “everybody is black” or “everybody is neither white nor black, but gray,” is not a moral judgment, but an escape from the responsibility of moral judgment.
Ayn Rand
Image
It's not about who's going to let me it's about who's going to stop me.
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
That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you. The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen - your values and choices. That which happened by accident - what family you were born into, in what country, and where you went to school - is totally unimportant.
Ayn Rand
Image
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.
Ayn Rand
Image
Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect? Yes. My dear fellow, who will let you? That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?
Ayn Rand
Image
The fact that a man has no claim on others ... does not preclude or prohibit good will among men and does not make it immoral to offer or to accept voluntary, non-sacrificial assistance.
Ayn Rand
Image
Self-esteem is reliance on ones power to think.
Ayn Rand
Image
It is not as late as you think. It is merely early - in the age of the rebirth of individualism.
Ayn Rand
Image
Creation comes before distribution - or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.
Ayn Rand
Image
There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.
Ayn Rand
Image
I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place.
Ayn Rand
Image
The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.
Ayn Rand