Quote

In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. 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

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
Keep
Lose
Title
Distorted
Mind
Loses
Unlimited
Mindless
Never
Name
Achieved
Travels
Men
Vision
Titles
Posture
Alive
Proper
Cowardly
Names
Ugly
Estate
Knowledge
Step
Estates
Intransigent
Values
Steps
Roads
Upright

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Don't ignore your own desires.... Don't sacrifice them. Examine their cause. There is a limit to how much you should have to bear.
Ayn Rand
Image
The government was set to protect man from criminals-and the constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed at private citizens, but against the government-as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.
Ayn Rand
Image
If [people] place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man's life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite.
Ayn Rand
Image
whose steps were a restless substitute for flight.
Ayn Rand
Image
That which exists possesses identity he could keep it out of existence by refusing to identify it.
Ayn Rand
Image
A rational process is a moral process.
Ayn Rand
Image
One can't love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name.
Ayn Rand
Image
The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is the conquest of men.
Ayn Rand
Image
There's nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.
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
Love is our response to our highest values.
Ayn Rand
Image
Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burnt at the stake he'd taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived and he lifted darkness from the face of the Earth.
Ayn Rand
Image
The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.
Ayn Rand
Image
I agree that [marriage] should be treated like a business deal. But every business deal has to have its own terms and its own kind of currency.
Ayn Rand
Image
She stood at the window, her arms spread wide, holding on to each side of the frame, it was as if she held a piece of the city.
Ayn Rand
Image
She fell asleep, lying there, her hand clasping his. Her last awareness, before she surrendered the responsibility of consciousness, was the sense of an enormous void, the void of a city and of a continent, where she would never be able to find the man whom she had no right to seek.
Ayn Rand
Image
The problem is not those who dream, but those who can only dream.
Ayn Rand
Image
Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.
Ayn Rand
Image
Your emotional capacity is an empty motor, and your values are the fuel with which your mind fills it. If you choose a mix of contradictions, it will clog your motor, corrode your transmission and wreck you on your first attempt to move with a machine which you, the driver, have corrupted.
Ayn Rand
Image
The end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.
Ayn Rand