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Life Quotes by Ayn Rand

207 Life quotes by Ayn Rand

All Life quotes Ayn Rand’s page

A clear outline of purpose shines in Rand's words. She says life rewards virtue and that happiness is its goal. She also warns that putting friendship or family above productive work is immoral. She also believes that we cannot escape our nature, and that reason guides every hour of life.

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I think. I am. I will.

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Live a life as a monument to your soul.

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I think, therefore I'll think.

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Love is our response to our highest values.

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“To a life; which is reason unto itself.”

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Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.

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

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I think it's a sin to sit down and let your life go without making a try for it.

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Do not help your jailers to pretend that their jail is your natural state of existence.

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“Your fear of death is not a love for life. . .”

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That which is not worth contemplating in life, is not worth recreating in art.

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Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims.

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Life is a value to be bought and thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.

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The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.

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The mind is the attribute of man. When man is born, he comes into existence with only one weapon with him--The reasoning…

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I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.

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Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence,

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“Maybe you can't afford to give them a raise, but how can they afford to live when the cost of living has…

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That which exists possesses identity; he could keep it out of existence by refusing to identify it.

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In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose...

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Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death.

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Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither…

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Do you know that my personal crusade in life (in the philosophical sense) is not merely to fight collectivism, nor to fight…

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An animal is equipped for sustaining its life; its senses provide it with an automatic code of action, an automatic knowledge of…

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“What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools…

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You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for…

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I write - and read - for the sake of the story... My basic test for any story is: 'Would I want…

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The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable…

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Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person…

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“You will live in a world of responsible beings, who will be as consistent and reliable as facts; the guarantee of their…

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“Let anyone who believes that a high standard of living is the achievement of labor unions and government controls ask himself the…

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Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The evidence is incontrovertible. The contrast between West and East…

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There's nothing of any importance in life - except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are,…

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“Dagny, there’s nothing of any importance in life—except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will…

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Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon…

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“If I found a job, a project, an idea or a person I wanted-I'd have to depend on the whole world. Everything…

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“Here’s another way. This is most important. Don't allow men to be happy. Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no…

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Life is the reward of virtue. And happiness is the goal and reward of life.

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All life is a purposeful struggle, and your only choice is the choice of a goal.

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We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.

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More by Ayn Rand

There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.

She watched the prairies the rivers, the towns slipping past at an untouchable distance below - and she noted that the sense of detachment…

“This was reality, she thought, this sense of clear outlines, of purpose, of lightness, of hope.”

A “collective” mind does not exist. It is merely the sum of endless numbers of individual minds. If we have an endless number of…

Lobbying' is the activity of attempting to influence legislation by privately influencing the legislators. It is the result and creation of a mixed economy-of…

“She moved her hand and let it rest against his. He did not withdraw his fingers and he did not pretend indifference. She bent…

This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before.

“There was still one response, the greatest, that she had missed. She thought: To find a feeling that would hold, as their sum, as…

Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to…

“We are fornicating in the sight of six billion people.”

“She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. To…

Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you?" He answered, "Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long…

Have you felt it too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you- except the things that count? And your most…

Every coercive monopoly was created by government intervention into the economy: by special privileges, such as franchises or subsidies, which closed the entry of…

We are all brothers under the skin - and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.