Quote

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

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
Men
Mines
Life
Mine
Masters
Individualist
Sacrifice
Heartless
Says
Ruled
Politics
Master
Anyone
Slave
Running
Rule

More quotes by 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
Ah, there's nothing like tea in the afternoon. When the British Empire collapses, historians will find that it had made but two invaluable contributions to civilization - this tea ritual and the detective novel.
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
The mark of an honest man... is that he means what he says and knows what he means.
Ayn Rand
Image
Selfishness does not mean only to do things for one's self. One may do things, affecting others, for his own pleasure and benefit. This is not immoral, but the highest of morality.
Ayn Rand
Image
Romantic art is the fuel and the spark plug of a Man's soul. It's task is to set a soul on fire and never let it go out.
Ayn Rand
Image
This was the great clarity of being beyond emotion, after the reward of having felt everything one could feel.
Ayn Rand
Image
I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals.
Ayn Rand
Image
Life is the reward of virtue. And happiness is the goal and reward of life.
Ayn Rand
Image
I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life.
Ayn Rand
Image
The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive.
Ayn Rand
Image
Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.
Ayn Rand
Image
Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?
Ayn Rand
Image
Morality pertains only to the sphere of man's free will - only to those actions which are open to his choice.
Ayn Rand
Image
Pleasure is nought but virtue's gayer name-- I wrong her still, I rate her worth too low: Virtue the root, and pleasure is the flow'r.
Ayn Rand
Image
The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him) it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life.
Ayn Rand
Image
I don’t approve of religion.
Ayn Rand
Image
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
Ayn Rand
Image
The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave.
Ayn Rand
Image
Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy . . . Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values, and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.
Ayn Rand