Quote

I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself.

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
Symbols
Wish
Anything
Symbol

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
Romantic art is always stylized: the better the art, the cleaner and more attractive and intelligent the stylization.
Ayn Rand
Image
Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgement and nothing can help you escape it - that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life.
Ayn Rand
Image
Men prosper or fail, survive or perish in proportion to the degree of their rationality.
Ayn Rand
Image
The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.
Ayn Rand
Image
Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one’s consciousness can permit the faking of existence.
Ayn Rand
Image
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.
Ayn Rand
Image
Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?
Ayn Rand
Image
Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.
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
I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need?
Ayn Rand
Image
Man's character is the product of his premises.
Ayn Rand
Image
Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others-misfortu ne is not a mortgage on achievement-fai lure is not a mortgage on success-sufferi ng is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence-man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone’s altar nor for anyone’s cause-life is not one huge hospital.
Ayn Rand
Image
Capitalism demands the best of every man - his rationality - and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him.
Ayn Rand
Image
That which exists possesses identity he could keep it out of existence by refusing to identify it.
Ayn Rand
Image
It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own.
Ayn Rand
Image
Aquinas brought an Aristotelian view of reason back into European culture, and lighted the way toward the Renaissance.
Ayn Rand
Image
A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue.
Ayn Rand
Image
Collectivism, as an intellectual power and a moral ideal, is dead. But freedom and individualism, and their political expression, capitalism, have not yet been discovered.
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
My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.
Ayn Rand