Quote

Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. Virtue is the act by which one aims and/or keeps it.

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
Gain
Keeps
Gains
Humility
Value
Aims
Virtue
Perseverance
Values
Acts
Keep
Aim

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence.
Ayn Rand
Image
She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.
Ayn Rand
Image
I want to be prepared to claim the greatest virtue of all - that I was a man who made money
Ayn Rand
Image
Creation comes before distribution - or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.
Ayn Rand
Image
Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection, and the base of a moral existence.
Ayn Rand
Image
Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
Ayn Rand
Image
There's nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.
Ayn Rand
Image
I refuse to apologize for my ability -- I refuse to apologize for my success -- I refuse to apologize for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it.
Ayn Rand
Image
A culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiate d masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men.
Ayn Rand
Image
Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.
Ayn Rand
Image
If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man's only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.
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
A BUSINESSMAN cannot force you to buy his product if he makes a mistake, He suffers the consequences if he fails, he takes the loss. A bureaucrat, forces you to obey his decisions, whether you agree with him or not... If he makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences If he fails, He passes the loss on to you, in the form of heavier taxes.
Ayn Rand
Image
The age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a prelude to the age of the cave.
Ayn Rand
Image
If the truth shall kill them, let them die.
Ayn Rand
Image
Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started.
Ayn Rand
Image
When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.
Ayn Rand
Image
By what he chooses to present and by how he presents it, any author expresses his fundamental, metaphysical values.
Ayn Rand
Image
Action without thought is mindlessness, and thought without action is hypocritical.
Ayn Rand
Image
A good quotation must be a complete entity. It must be like a headline - sharp, clear, whole.
Ayn Rand