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Ayn Rand Quotes


Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.

Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property.

Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.

Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.

Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason.

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.

Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started.

People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk.

Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.

So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.

The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.

The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.

The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.