Ayn Rand Quotes

Did it ever occur to you, that there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical? There is no conflict, and no call for sacrifice, and no man is a threat to the aims of another if men understand that reality is an absolute not to be faked, that lies do not work, that the unearned cannot be had, that the undeserved cannot be given, that the destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't.

If you have learned how to disagree without being disagreeable, then you have discovered the secrete of getting along - whether it be business, family relations, or life itself.

When you let someone else win an argument, often you both end up winners.

The opposite of war is not peace, it's creation.

Peace is a natural effect of trade.

The keystone of successful business is cooperation. Friction retards progress.

I'd recommend the high road to anybody. You wonder about it and you don't really appreciate it until you do it and you find that it worked for everyone. But I recommend it.

It was good for the Japanese. It was good for the Russians, and it was good for me.

The progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce and the diffusion of education, then upon the labors of cabinets and foreign offices.

Capital and labor are just as harmonious as roast beef and a hungry stomach.

Conflicts arouse tremendous passions and passion clouds judgment.

The win-win situation is the basis for America's entire business world. Instead of wasting our time attempting to defeat each other, let's find a way that will make both of us gain and go home satisfied. In Israel, it doesn't work because the only meaning of victory is seeing your rival's body lying trampled on the floor.

This is the unusual thing about nonviolence -- nobody is defeated, everybody shares in the victory.

People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.

Born in the same land, we ought to live as brothers, doing to each other all the good we can, and not listening to wicked men, who may endeavor to make us enemies. By living in peace, we can help and prosper one another; by waging war, we can kill and destroy many on both sides; but those who survive will not be the happier for that.

In the end, the aggressors always destroy themselves, making way for others who know how to cooperate and get along. Life is much less a competitive struggle for survival than a triumph of cooperation and creativity.

All people would really want peace and all would want to be sure that they would not be taken advantage of.

A good plan isn't one where someone wins, it's where nobody thinks they've lost.

Nonviolence seeks to ‘win’ not by destroying or even by humiliating the adversary, but by convincing [the adversary] that there is a higher and more certain common good than can be attained by bombs and blood. Nonviolence, ideally speaking, does not try to overcome the adversary by winning over [them], but to turn [them] from an adversary into a collaborator by winning [them] over.

It seems to me that there are two great enemies of peace - fear and selfishness.

War is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror. Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things. Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor, not the profession of arms, brings happiness. Peace builds, war destroys.

Peace is far more preferable to war. [...] I believe that peace is the only path to true security. [...] And there is no question that the only path to peace is through negotiations .

In a shared fish, there are no bones.

Fooles bite one another, but wise-men agree together.

Be careful, think about the effect of what you say. Your words should be constructive, bring people together, not pull them apart.