Ayn Rand Quotes

You had no right to be born; for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength.

I think these days a lot of the younger generation feels that the world owes them something. But you've got to get off your backside and you've got to do all the crap stuff, too.

I'm sayin', why spend mine when I can spend yours?

No elaboration of physical or moral accomplishment can atone for the sin of parasitism.

There is no such thing as society, there is a living tapestry of men and women and the beauty of that tapestry, and the quality of our lives, will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and to turn round and help, by our own efforts, those who are unfortunate. There's no such thing as entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Don't teach a man to fish and you feed yourself. He's a grown man, fishing's not that hard.

I saw how hard my parents worked, and I didn't want to be a freeloader.

You can't expect anyone to hand something to you. And I'm OK with that.

I never leave the field. I block. I catch. I never leave the field. I don't have anybody do my job. I do it myself.

If I produce myself, I'm gonna exploit no one - just myself.

I'm totally independent. I don't bear any responsibility to any system.

A free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country.

You have people like Sarah Jessica Parker - and it's also because of her mother and where she came from and all that stuff - but how you're taught to be responsible for yourself rather than endlessly people waiting for you and bringing you things.

I have learned that it is no one else’s job to take care of me but me.

Psychologist Nathaniel Branden speaks of a benevolent sense of life possible to those with rational, productive values, vividly contrasted with the coercive parasitic group-culture of mystics and altruists we live in, where people all around you seem a burdensome annoyance, a threat to your survival. Having been told from childhood that life is a zero-sum game in which you owe everything to others, at some level you worry all the time that someday the bastards will collect. And collect they do, every April 15th. Why do you think they call it collectivism?

Buddah says once you understand that you are lost and you have to find your own way and there is no help coming, you become responsible. Prayer is irresponsible. To pray is just to avoid responsibility, to pray is to be lazy. To pray is just an escape. Buddha says effort is needed. It is an insult to pray.

Nothing is given to you.

When others spoke of the fear of war, you spoke of the need for warriors and peace through strength. When others bewailed the failure of big government to provide for the collective good, you spoke of self-reliance, of personal responsibility, of individual pride and integrity. When others preached compromise - when others demanded compromise, you, Ronald Reagan, preached conviction.

If I'm not prepared, I don't feel confident. It's something that you can have control of. You deserve what it is you're going after as long as you've done the work that needs to be done to prepare for it. You can't just have your hand out!

There is too little idea of personal responsibility; too much of "the world owes me a living," forgetting that if the world does owe you a living, you must be your own collector.

Pray as if all depended on God and work as if all depended upon you.

Let every man mind his own business.

The leftist is anti-individualistic... He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense of confidence in his own ability to solve his own problems and satisfy his own needs.

Conservatives say human beings are people who are primarily concerned with self-interest, and that's what they should be concerned with - self-interest and individual responsibility. They shouldn't be paying for anybody else's health care or anything else like that. As a result, government is something that should be absolutely minimal. It's not there for your overall protection and empowerment - it's not there to offer protection against disease or natural disasters or bad products or companies who sell you fallacious mortgages and so on.

There is no safe political refuge for those afraid to take responsibility for their own lives.