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

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.
Ayn Rand
Image
God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive.
Ayn Rand
Image
All depressions are caused by government interference and the cure is always offered to take more of the poison that caused the disaster. Depressions are not the result of a free economy.
Ayn Rand
Image
Do not let your fire go out ... Do not let the Hero in your soul perish ... Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
Ayn Rand
Image
A good novel is an indivisible sum every scene, sequence and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization.
Ayn Rand
Image
Many words have been granted me, and some are wise, and some are false, but only three are holy: I will it!
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
The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be.
Ayn Rand
Image
Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality
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
Ideas, in a free society, are not a crime- and neither can they serve as the justification of a crime.
Ayn Rand
Image
I cannot stand Tolstoy, and reading him was the most boring literary duty I ever had to perform, his philosophy and his sense of life are not merely mistaken, but evil, and yet, from a purely literary viewpoint, on his own terms, I have to evaluate him as a good writer.
Ayn Rand
Image
Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man's first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.
Ayn Rand
Image
When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are.
Ayn Rand
Image
Any group or collective, large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members.
Ayn Rand
Image
A rational man is guided by his thinking - by a process of Reason - not by his feelings and desires.
Ayn Rand
Image
Capitalism has been called a system of greed—yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of.
Ayn Rand
Image
You love people, not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for their values their virtues.
Ayn Rand
Image
You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.
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