Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Identify the dominant philosophy of a society and you can predict its future.
Ayn Rand
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Predict
Identify
Dominant
Philosophy
Society
Future
More quotes by Ayn Rand
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
Collectivism answers: The power of society is unlimited. Society may make any laws it wishes, and force them upon anyone in any manner it wishes.
Ayn Rand
I want to know that I've accomplished something. I want to feel that it had some meaning. At the last summing up, I want to be sure it wasn't all-for nothing.
Ayn Rand
Morality pertains only to the sphere of man's free will - only to those actions which are open to his choice.
Ayn Rand
Ferris: Are you going to be as impractical as that? Rearden: The evaluation of an action as practical, Dr. Ferris, depends on what it is that one wishes to practice. Ferris: Haven't you always placed your self-interest above all else? Rearden: That is what I am doing right now.
Ayn Rand
One must differentiate between one's thoughts and one's emotions with full clarity and precision...No discussion, cooperation, agreement, or understanding is possible among men who substitute emotion for proof.
Ayn Rand
The more neurotic and evasive a person is, the shorter the range of his interests.
Ayn Rand
Humor is not an unconditional virtue its moral character depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue to laugh at the good, is a hideous vice. Too often, humor is used as the camouflage of moral cowardice.
Ayn Rand
Compromise does not satisfy, but dissatisfies everybody it does not lead to any general fulfillment, but to general frustration those who try to become everything to all people end up by not being anything to anyone.
Ayn Rand
Her face lay still on the air under his face.
Ayn Rand
Do not consider Collectivists as sincere but deluded idealists. The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal brutality is not idealistic, no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to do good by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
Ayn Rand
I cannot stand Tolstoy, and reading him was the most boring literary duty I ever had to perform, his philosophy and his sense of life are not merely mistaken, but evil, and yet, from a purely literary viewpoint, on his own terms, I have to evaluate him as a good writer.
Ayn Rand
The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort.
Ayn Rand
There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we’re not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge.
Ayn Rand
You were not born to be a second-hander. Howard Roark to Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand
Freedom of association includes the freedom not to associate.
Ayn Rand
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
If a man wants love he should correct his weaknesses, or his flaws, and he may deserve it. But he cannot expect the unearned, either in love or in money either in matter or in spirit.
Ayn Rand
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
A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.
Ayn Rand
