Quote

Emotions are not tools of cognition. They tell you nothing about the nature of reality.

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
Nothing
Cognition
Emotions
Tools
Emotion
Tell
Nature
Reality

More quotes by Ayn Rand

Image
It is not advisable to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener.
Ayn Rand
Image
If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.
Ayn Rand
Image
It was the joy of admiration and of one's own ability, growing together.
Ayn Rand
Image
A rational man is guided by his thinking - by a process of Reason - not by his feelings and desires.
Ayn Rand
Image
If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and ... if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own I would refuse... I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist.
Ayn Rand
Image
I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.
Ayn Rand
Image
It is true that the welfare-statists are not socialists, that they never advocated or intended the socialization of private property, that they want to 'preserve' private property-with government control of its use and disposal. But that is the fundamental characteristic of fascism.
Ayn Rand
Image
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
Image
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
Image
People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism.
Ayn Rand
Image
I think. I am. I will.
Ayn Rand
Image
Individualism regards man-every man-as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.
Ayn Rand
Image
A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.
Ayn Rand
Image
You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.
Ayn Rand
Image
The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be.
Ayn Rand
Image
The view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve, my life and my values could not bring me to that.
Ayn Rand
Image
I want it real. I want to know that there is someone, somewhere, who wants it, too. Or else what is the use of seeing it, and working, and burning oneself for an impossible vision? A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry
Ayn Rand
Image
She knew that even pain can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the witness.
Ayn Rand
Image
Allies never trust each other, but that doesn't spoil their effectiveness.
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