Quote

He stepped to the window and pointed to the skyscrapers of the city. He said that we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when we would see the lights of New York go out, we would know that our job was done.

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
Light
Stepped
Done
Pointed
Would
Lights
World
Window
York
City
Skyscrapers
Cities
Extinguish
Jobs
Skyscraper

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
Ayn Rand
Image
Let no man posture as an advocate of peace if he proposes or supports any social system that initiates the use of force against individual men, in any form.
Ayn Rand
Image
Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.
Ayn Rand
Image
The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort.
Ayn Rand
Image
We [entrepreneurs] required that you leave us free to function -- free to think and work as we choose ... -- free to earn our own profits and make our own fortunes ... Such was the price we asked, which you chose to reject as too high.
Ayn Rand
Image
Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.” An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.
Ayn Rand
Image
The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind.
Ayn Rand
Image
Andrei, did you like the opera? Not particularly. Andrei, do you see what you're missing? I don't think I do, Kira. It's all rather silly. And useless. Can't you enjoy things that are useless, merely because they are beautiful? No. But I enjoyed it. The music? No. The way you listened to it.
Ayn Rand
Image
Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy . . . Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values, and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.
Ayn Rand
Image
You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.
Ayn Rand
Image
To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.
Ayn Rand
Image
Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper
Ayn Rand
Image
Whatever road I take, the guiding star is within me the guiding star and the loadstone which point the way. They point in but one direction. They point to me.
Ayn Rand
Image
Capitalism and altruism are incompatible they are philosophical opposites they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society.
Ayn Rand
Image
There is no such dichotomy as 'human rights' versus 'property rights.' No human rights can exist without property rights.
Ayn Rand
Image
She's a writer. The kind of writer who wouldn't be published outside. She believes that when one deals with words, one deals with the mind.
Ayn Rand
Image
Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character.
Ayn Rand
Image
This is the age othe common man, they tell us-a title which any man may claim to the extent osuch distinction as he has managed not to achieve.
Ayn Rand
Image
The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind
Ayn Rand
Image
Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man's capacity to live.
Ayn Rand