Quote

It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust but to know.

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
Philosophy
Greatest
Objectivism
Existence
Sensation
Knowing
Sensations
Novelists
Philosopher
Greatness
Trust

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
An individualist is a man who says: 'I will not run anyone's life - nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule or be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone - nor sacrifice anyone to myself.'
Ayn Rand
Image
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
Ayn Rand
Image
Don't worry. They're all against me. But I have one advantage: they don't know what they want. I do.
Ayn Rand
Image
If the truth shall kill them, let them die.
Ayn Rand
Image
To say 'I love you' one must first be able to say the 'I.'
Ayn Rand
Image
The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory. The sacred word: EGO.
Ayn Rand
Image
Do you know that my personal crusade in life (in the philosophical sense) is not merely to fight collectivism, nor to fight altruism? These are only consequences, effects, not causes. I am out after the real cause, the real root of evil on earth the irrational.
Ayn Rand
Image
Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind, and a step that travels unlimited roads.
Ayn Rand
Image
Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity.
Ayn Rand
Image
Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through.
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
There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
Ayn Rand
Image
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage-the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterologic al traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.
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
Humor is not an unconditional virtue its moral character depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue to laugh at the good, is a hideous vice. Too often, humor is used as the camouflage of moral cowardice.
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
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
That which exists possesses identity he could keep it out of existence by refusing to identify it.
Ayn Rand
Image
If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose . . . the fact that they were the people who created the phrase to make money. No other language or nation had ever used these words before. . . . Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.
Ayn Rand
Image
The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work.
Ayn Rand