Quotes from Ayn Rand

There is only one power that determines the course of history, just as it determines the course of every individual life: the power of man's rational faculty—the power of ideas.

Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires...Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform.

This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.

The walls are cracked and water runs upon them within threads without sound, black and glistening as blood.

There is no necessity for pain-why, then, is the worst pain reserved for those who will not accept its necessity?

The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: "Merry Christmas"—not "Weep and Repent." And the good will is expressed in a material, earthly form—by giving presents to one's friends, or by sending them cards in token of remembrance.

It's a law of survival, isn't it?—to seek the best. I didn't come for your sake. I came for mine.

The only guilt of the victims, he thought, had been that they accepted it as guilt.

She had never done these things before; she did them expertly. She had a capacity for action, a competence that clashed incongruously with her appearance.

I wish I had the power to tell them that the despair of their hearts was not to be final, and their night was not without hope. For the battle they lost can never be lost. For that which they died to save can never perish. Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through. And man will go on.

We are not used to persons who do things simply for the love of god whom they don't believe in.

It was a day in March, and the sky was a faint green with the first hint of spring. In Central Park, five hundred feet below, the earth caught the tone of the sky in a shade of brown that promised to become green, and the lakes lay like splinters of glass under the cobwebs of bare branches.