Are you looking for the best collection of Ayn Rand quotes? Then look no further.
Ayn Rand was a Russian-born American writer and philosopher. She is widely known for for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism.
Rand was considered to be rather controversial and was an uncompromising advocate of rational individualism and laissez-faire capitalism. She was opposed socialism, altruism, and was highly critical of most philosophers and philosophical traditions known to her, except for Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and classical liberals.
While academia generally ignored or rejected her philosophy, academic interest has increased in recent decades and she has been a major influence among libertarians and American conservatives.
This Ayn Rand quotes collection represents her most inspiring thoughts on life, love, money, capitalism and other words of wisdom to help you become successful in achieving your dreams.
Best Ayn Rand Quotes
1. “Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.” – Ayn Rand
2. “Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.” – Ayn Rand
3. “To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that’s real power.” – Ayn Rand
4. “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.” – Ayn Rand
5. “A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.” – Ayn Rand
6. “Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.” – Ayn Rand
7. “The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.” – Ayn Rand
8. “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.” – Ayn Rand
9. “The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.” – Ayn Rand
10. “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.” – Ayn Rand
11. “So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?” – Ayn Rand
12. “Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason.” – Ayn Rand
13. “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.” – Ayn Rand
14. “Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves – or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.” – Ayn Rand
15. “Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” – Ayn Rand
16. “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.” – Ayn Rand
17. “There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.” – Ayn Rand
18. “Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.” – Ayn Rand
19. “The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.” – Ayn Rand
20. “Evil requires the sanction of the victim.” – Ayn Rand
21. “Do not ever say that the desire to ‘do good’ by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.” – Ayn Rand
22. “From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man – the function of his reasoning mind.” – Ayn Rand
23. “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” – Ayn Rand
24. “Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others.” – Ayn Rand
25. “Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.” – Ayn Rand
26. “A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” – Ayn Rand
27. “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.” – Ayn Rand
28. “An inventor is a man who asks Why? of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.” – Ayn Rand
29. “I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in between.” – Ayn Rand
30. “Freedom: To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.” – Ayn Rand
31. “The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.” – Ayn Rand
32. “The truth is not for all men, but for those who seek it.” – Ayn Rand
33. “I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.” – Ayn Rand
34. “If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.” – Ayn Rand
35. “The businessman’s tool is value.” – Ayn Rand
36. “Love is the expression of one’s values.” – Ayn Rand
37. “Worry is a waste of emotional reserve.” – Ayn Rand
38. “The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.” – Ayn Rand
39. “Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.” – Ayn Rand
40. “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.” – Ayn Rand
41. “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.” – Ayn Rand
42. “My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being.” – Ayn Rand
43. “Do not let your fire go out. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in the lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your riad and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.” – Ayn Rand
44. “Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.” – Ayn Rand
45. “Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants.” – Ayn Rand
46. “I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.” – Ayn Rand
47. “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 it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.” – Ayn Rand
48. “Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment’s torture.” – Ayn Rand
49. “What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.” – Ayn Rand
50. “To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love—because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.” – Ayn Rand
51. “To say ‘I love you’ one must know first how to say the ‘I’.” – Ayn Rand
52. “Life is the reward of virtue. And happiness is the goal and reward of life.” – Ayn Rand
53. “You must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences.” – Ayn Rand
54. “Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven, but not those who lack the courage of their own greatness.” – Ayn Rand
55. “No one’s happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.” – Ayn Rand
56. “The most depraved type of human being is the man without a purpose.” – Ayn Rand
57. “Why is it so hard to find good men for any job nowadays? Because we live in a society that breeds incompetence.” – Ayn Rand
58. “Wisdom lies in knowing when to remember and when to forget. Consistency is not a habit of mind which it is wise to practice or to expect of the human race.” – Ayn Rand
59. “Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.” – Ayn Rand
60. “Man is a being with free will; therefore, each man is potentially good or evil, and it’s up to him and only him (through his reasoning mind) to decide which he wants to be.” – Ayn Rand
Did you find these Ayn Rand Quotes inspiring?
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Marty
Oct 25, 2020 at 2:21 pm
Thank you for these quotations! I have been an admirer of Ayn Rand from the first moment of reading the selection “From Each According to their ability, To Each According To Their need” in Rand’s collection “For The New Intellectual.” I have exchanged letters with Nathaniel Branden, met him on one occasion: that of his becoming a US citizen; and I had transcribed nearly all of his lectures on “The Basic Principles of Objectivism” in the early 1970’s during my mid-20’s. I became a founding member of the Los Angeles County Libertarian Party in the mid-1970’s because the Libertarian Party was (and is) the only political party which embraces Rand’s political and moral principles of non-aggression and capitalism. I welcome any discussions—pro or con—regarding Objectivism and Libertarianism. Thank you for allowing me to comment here.