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Virtue Quotes by Ayn Rand

53 Virtue quotes by Ayn Rand

All Virtue quotes Ayn Rand’s page

A person standing firm with a rational mind reflects Ayn Rand’s view of virtue as a personal triumph. Her quotes argue that life rewards virtue, that selfishness can be moral when guided by reason, and that humor depends on what is being mocked. She also warns against altruism that denies self‑existence.

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“Virtue is the giving of undeserved.”

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Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.

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“Money is the barometer of society's virtue.”

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Pleasure is nought but virtue's gayer name-- I wrong her still, I rate her worth too low: Virtue the root, and pleasure…

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Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. Virtue is the act by which one aims and/or keeps it.

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The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice,' but integrity.

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A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue.

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

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What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.

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To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.

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You love people, not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for their values;…

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When you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately, that is to love people without any standard, to love them regardless of whether…

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Humor is not an unconditional virtue; its moral character depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue; to…

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Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch…

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Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange…

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This is pity,” he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong…

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Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has…

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[Altruism] is a moral system which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others…

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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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“Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot exist. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without…

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You'll come back, because yours is an error of knowledge, not a moral failure, not an act of surrender to evil, but…

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People don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort…

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You have chosen to risk your lives for the defense of this country. I will not insult you by saying that you…

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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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Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice... Man has to be a man-by choice; he…

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Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in…

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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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“People don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort…

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“As a basic step of self-esteem, learn to treat as the mark of a cannibal any man’s demand for your help. To…

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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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I want to be prepared to claim the greatest virtue of all - that I was a man who made money

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Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one’s consciousness can permit the faking…

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“Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices”

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“The world is ours, whenever we choose to claim it, by virtue and grace of the fact that ours is the Morality…

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Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue.

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Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

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Freedom comes from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue.

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Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an…

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Altruism does not mean mere kindness or generosity, but the sacrifice of the best among men to the worst, the sacrifice of…

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Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. ... To make that the highest test…

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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.