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You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

Ayn Rand

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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
Ignoring
Ignore
Consequences
Consequence
Reality

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To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.
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You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgement and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been calle anti social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads.
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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.
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Your soul has a single basic function-the act of valuing.
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Capitalism and altruism are incompatible they are philosophical opposites they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society.
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the worst wars are religious wars between sects of the same religion or civil wars between brothers of the same race.
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Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work, pride is the result.
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There can be no compromise on moral principles.
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The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind.
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A man's rights are not violated by a private individual's refusal to deal with him.
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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.
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The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is the conquest of men.
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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.
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The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world
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The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it.
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The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: “Merry Christmas”-not “Weep and Repent.” And the good will is expressed in a material, earthly form-by giving presents to one's friends, or by sending them cards in token of remembrance . . . .
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Men have died in torture chambers, on the stake, in concentration camps, in front of firing squads, rather than renounce their convictions. The appeaser renounces his under the pressure of a frown on a vacant face.
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It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.
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Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence.
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The end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.
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