Ayn Rand- Inspiring Quotes

Atlas Shrugged

• Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking...
• I am, therefore I'll think.
• Honest people are never touchy about the matter of being trusted.
• The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive- a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. Man's mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God. Man's standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man's power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith. The purpose of man's life is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question.
• For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors - between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.
• Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason is his only means to gain it. Reason is the faculty that perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by his senses. The task of his senses is to give him the evidence of existence, but the task of identifying it belongs to his reason, his senses tell him only that something is, but what it is must be learned by his mind.

• “If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?”

The Fountainhead

• Show me your achievement - and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.Every form of happiness is private.
  
• Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched.
• Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential.
• I have come here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life.... It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.
• Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received--hatred. The great creators--the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors--stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The first airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.
• To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I'.
• Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness.
• From the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.
• Man's first frown is the firs sign of his original thought
• Can you rule a thinking man?
• The primary act- the process of reasoning must be performed by each man alone.
• We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.
• This is a world in which man doesn't work for such an innocent incentive as money