« All Action Quotes · Ayn Rand's Page
Action Quotes by Ayn Rand
- The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual; everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort.
- "You were not born to be a second-hander." Howard Roark to Gail Wynand in "The Fountainhead"
- What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus physical coercion or…
- No individual or private group or private organization has the legal power to initiate the use of physical force against other individuals or groups and…
- Every coercive monopoly was created by government intervention into the economy: by special privileges, such as franchises or subsidies, which closed the entry of competitors…
- An animal is equipped for sustaining its life; its senses provide it with an automatic code of action, an automatic knowledge of what is good…
- Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.
- If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society-you are not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not. Only…
- Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support…
- To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the…
- Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group - whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man…
- The Founding Fathers were neither passive, death-worshipin g mystics nor mindless, power-seeking looters; as a political group they were a phenomenon unprecedented in history: they…
- A majority vote is not an epistemological validation of an idea. Voting is merely a proper political device--within a strictly, constitutionall y delimited sphere of…
- [T]he only real moral crime that one man can commit against another is the attempt to create, by his words or actions, an impression of…
- A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.
- Rights are not a matter of numbers - and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an…
- If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others.
- Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's…
- Remember that rights are moral principles which define and protect a man's freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other men.
- My greatest personal mistake is ever to allow a word or moment that “doesn’t count,” i.e., that I do not refer to my own basic…
- Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is…
- Through the dry phases of calculations in her mind, she noticed that she did have time to feel something: it was the hard, exhilarating pleasure…
- I love you. As the same value, as the same expression, with the same pride and the same meaning as I love my work, my…
- 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 need the predated…
- Action without thought is mindlessness, and thought without action is hypocritical.
More Action Quotes
- Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom. — Hannah Arendt
- Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can… — Hannah Arendt
- Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think. — Hannah Arendt
- Action without a name, a who attached to it, is meaningless. — Hannah Arendt
- All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire. — Aristotle
- Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave… — Aristotle
- Well begun is half done. — Aristotle
- A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what… — Aristotle
- Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last. — Aristotle
- We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action. — Aristotle
- Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason… — Aristotle
- What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue… — Aristotle