Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality. — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
“Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils,… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
Freedom comes from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue. — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice,' but integrity. — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
“That's your cruelty, that's what's mean and selfish about you. If you loved your brother, you'd give him a job he didn't… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
There's nothing of any importance in life - except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are,… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
You love people, not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for their values;… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
You have chosen to risk your lives for the defense of this country. I will not insult you by saying that you… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
When you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately, that is to love people without any standard, to love them regardless of whether… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
There must be only three supreme values which govern a person's life: Reason, Purpose, and Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
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.… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue. — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one’s consciousness can permit the faking… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
You'll come back, because yours is an error of knowledge, not a moral failure, not an act of surrender to evil, but… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
This is pity,” he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. Virtue is the act by which one aims and/or keeps it. — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
“Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it—that no… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
For centuries, the mystics of spirit had existed by running a protection racket - by making life on earth unbearable, then charging… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all. — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
She watched the prairies the rivers, the towns slipping past at an untouchable distance below - and she noted that the sense of detachment… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
“This was reality, she thought, this sense of clear outlines, of purpose, of lightness, of hope.” — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
A “collective” mind does not exist. It is merely the sum of endless numbers of individual minds. If we have an endless number of… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
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… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
“She moved her hand and let it rest against his. He did not withdraw his fingers and he did not pretend indifference. She bent… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before. — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
“There was still one response, the greatest, that she had missed. She thought: To find a feeling that would hold, as their sum, as… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
“She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. To… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
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… — Ayn Rand Copy Share Image
