Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The nation which once held the creed that greatness is achieved by production, is now told that it is achieved by squalor.
Ayn Rand
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Achieve
Achieved
Told
Production
Nations
Reaching
Productions
Squalor
Philosopher
Playwright
Held
Creed
Greatness
Creeds
Nation
Novelists
More quotes by Ayn Rand
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
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
There's nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.
Ayn Rand
The most depraved type of human being ... (is) the man without a purpose.
Ayn Rand
Ferris: Are you going to be as impractical as that? Rearden: The evaluation of an action as practical, Dr. Ferris, depends on what it is that one wishes to practice. Ferris: Haven't you always placed your self-interest above all else? Rearden: That is what I am doing right now.
Ayn Rand
You'd let the whole world perish rather than soil that immaculate self of yours with a single spot of which you'd have to be ashamed.
Ayn Rand
You don't know how hard I've tried to be left standing all by myself.
Ayn Rand
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
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
Ayn Rand
Mysticism requires the notion of the unknowable, which is revealed to some and withheld from others this divides men into those who feel guilt and those who cash in on it.
Ayn Rand
Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy it cannot survive without a philosophical base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go.
Ayn Rand
Did it ever occur to you, that there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires - if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical?
Ayn Rand
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
Thinking men cannot be ruled ambitious men do not stagnate.
Ayn Rand
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
In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.
Ayn Rand
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
That an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.
Ayn Rand
Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.
Ayn Rand
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.
Ayn Rand
