Quote

The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose.

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
Purposelessness
Without
Mercy
Unidentified
Men
Totally
Drifts
Life
Capable
Drifting
Control
Random
Purpose
Evil
Urges
Feelings
Novelists
Order
Productive

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
What is kinder--to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility beyond their endurance--or to see them as they are, and accept it because it makes them comfortable?
Ayn Rand
Image
Thinking men cannot be ruled ambitious men do not stagnate.
Ayn Rand
Image
It is a sin to write this.
Ayn Rand
Image
Man is a being with free will therefore, each man is potentially good or evil, and it's up to him and only him (through his reasoning mind) to decide which he wants to be.
Ayn Rand
Image
Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims.
Ayn Rand
Image
Government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.
Ayn Rand
Image
Politically, the goal of today’s dominant trend is statism. Philosophically, the goal is the obliteration of reason psychologically, it is the erosion of ambition.
Ayn Rand
Image
What objectivity and the study of philosophy requires is not an 'open mind,' but an active mind - a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them criticially.
Ayn Rand
Image
If parasitism, favoritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence.
Ayn Rand
Image
Today we have discovered the word that could not be said. I
Ayn Rand
Image
A reader has to be concerned only with the end result unless he chooses to analyze it, he does not have to know by what means that result was achieved-but it is my job to know.
Ayn Rand
Image
Man cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy.
Ayn Rand
Image
You're not sorry. You could've been here if you made the effort. But when did you ever make an effort for anybody but yourself? You're not interested in any of us or in anything we do. You think if you pay the bills, that's enough, don't you? Money! That's all you know. And all you give us is money. Have you even given us any time?
Ayn Rand
Image
Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.
Ayn Rand
Image
When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him, by force.
Ayn Rand
Image
every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing, but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he'll rise.
Ayn Rand
Image
The ' pleasure' of being drunk is obviously the pleasure of escaping from the responsibility of Consciousness.
Ayn Rand
Image
She thought: at this moment, the glass stem between his fingers feels just like the one between mine. We have this much in common.
Ayn Rand
Image
A free mind and a free market are corollaries.
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