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Thinking Quotes by Ayn Rand

87 Thinking quotes by Ayn Rand

All Thinking quotes Ayn Rand’s page

A rational man guided by reason shows that thinking, not feelings, should lead decisions. Rand says any job becomes creative when a thinking mind is involved, turning work into art. She also claims that the only moral command is to think, making personal responsibility the core of life.

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But I don't think of you. - Howard Roark

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I think. I am. I will.

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I think, therefore I'll think.

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I am. I think. I will.

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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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“A thinking child cannot conform. Thought does not bow to authority.”

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No man can use his brain to think for another.

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You know, I think that only if one feels immensely important can one feel truly light.

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Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.

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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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Self-esteem is reliance on ones power to think.

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There is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.

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Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.

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What do I "think" of President Reagan? The best answer to give would be: I don't think of him. And the more…

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A rational man is guided by his thinking - by a process of Reason - not by his feelings and desires.

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When you force a man to act against his own choice and judgment, it's his thinking that you want him to suspend.

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It is not as late as you think. It is merely early - in the age of the rebirth of individualism.

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Self-esteem is reliance on one's power to think... The man of authentic self-confidence is the man who relies on the judgment of…

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To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind…

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

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If you get caught at some crucial point and somebody tells you that your doctrine doesn't make sense - you're ready for…

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Man needs knowledge in order to survive, and only reason can achieve it; men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason,…

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The art of writing is the art of doing what you think you're doing. This is not as simple as it sounds.…

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And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor's pocket? No, it's…

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[T]he only real moral crime that one man can commit against another is the attempt to create, by his words or actions,…

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Andrei, did you like the opera?" "Not particularly." "Andrei, do you see what you're missing?" "I don't think I do, Kira. It's…

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I don't like people who speak or think in terms of gaining anybody's confidence. If one's actions are honest, one does not…

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That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom…

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The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully - and two…

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I like to think of fire held in a man's hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder…

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There must be only three supreme values which govern a person's life: Reason, Purpose, and Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of…

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“Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils,…

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It's easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience.…

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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…

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Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable…

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“Man’s mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him,…

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Don't think. Believe. Trust your heart, not your brain. Don't think. Feel. Believe.

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“At a time like this, we can't afford the luxury of thinking!”

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There are no evil thoughts except one; the refusal to think.

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Thinking men cannot be ruled; ambitious men do not stagnate.

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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.