Ayn Rand Quotes

Individualism regards man-every man-as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.

The individual is greater than the state.

Every person's life is theirs by right. An individual's life can and must belong only to to himself, not to any society or community, or he is then but a slave.

Libertarianism is a way of measuring how the government and other kinds of systems respect the individual. At the core of libertarianism is the idea that the individual is sacrosanct and that anything that's done contrary to the well-being of the individual needs some pretty serious justification.

As a human being, I do feel like it's my right to be able to stand up for and speak on whatever I want.

If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling and indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less rights in himself than one of his neighbors, or indeed all of them put together. This would be slavery, and not that liberty which the bill of rights has made inviolable, and for the preservation of which our government has been charged.

You have to ask yourself, 'Who owns me? Do I own myself or am I just another piece of government property?'

There is a sacred realm of privacy for every man and woman where he makes his choices and decisions-a realm of his own essential rights and liberties into which the law, generally speaking, must not intrude.

Man holds these rights [life, liberty and property], not from the Collective nor for the Collective, but against the Collective - as a barrier which the Collective cannot cross... these rights are man's protection against all other men.

The heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights.

I will never surrender the rights of the individual - the complete rights of the individual - to any "ism" whatever.

The Conservative knows that to regard man as part of an undifferentiated mass is to consign him to ultimate slavery.

The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man's first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men.

I'm a very individualistic person. That is why I don't belong to any political party or anything. I really believe in justice and freedom.

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.

The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation.

America is the most individualist, libertarian culture in the world.

Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands are properly his.

The right to one's person may be said to be a right of complete immunity.

a law unto himself who responds only to his own conversation.

Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is of right, absolute.

What makes America unique in the world is the idea of the self-directed life.

Liberty is an individual, not a collective, right.