1,908 Quotes by Ayn Rand

…of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character.

…–now, be happy. But I’m not. I feel nothing. When I ‘m honest with myself, I know that the only emotion I’ve felt in years is being tired. Not physically tired. Just tired. It’s as if…as if there were nobody there to feel any more.But that’s not all. There’s something much worse. It’s doing something horrible to me. I’m beginning to hate people…

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?

Your life, your achievement, your happiness, your person are of paramount importance. Live up to your highest vision of yourself no matter what the circumstances you might encounter. An exalted view of self-esteem is a man's most admirable quality.

The prisoners liked to talk about their past. Their memories were the only future they had.

Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. Happy men are free men.

...if ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that it’s your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself—that will be the man who’s not after your soul.

It was the only thing I ever really wanted. And that’s the sin that can’t be forgiven--that I hadn’t done what I wanted. It feels so dirty and pointless and monstrous, as one feels about insanity, because there’s no sense to it, no dignity, nothing but pain--and wasted pain...why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage.

In the many months of his absence, she never wondered whether he was true to her or not; she knew he was. She knew, even though she was too young to know the reason, that indiscriminate desire and unselective indulgence were possible only to those who regarded sex and themselves as evil.