Ayn Rand Inspirational Quotations

Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.

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

A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.

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

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.

To say 'I love you' one must first be able to say the 'I.'

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.

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

Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.

It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.

There is no such thing as a lousy job - only lousy men who don't care to do it.

If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.

Patience is always rewarded and romance is always round the corner!

I think, therefore I'll think.

Never ask people about your work.

He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost fascinating.

Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?

The more you learn, the more you know that you know nothing.

every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing, but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he'll rise.

To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?

If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others.

Because, you see, God—whatever anyone chooses to call God—is one's highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it.

Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.

Do not let the hero in your soul perish...

But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself.

Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.