Ayn Rand Quotes

For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors - between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.

Love is happy when it is able to give something. The ego is happy when it is able to take something.

The final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

You only live once. Trying to do the right thing for other people often doesn't work out, and you have to follow your own path in order to make things work out best for everyone.

I believe in individual rights so much that I don't like any sort of 'what's good for the cause'-type questions.

Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.

It's my life and my death.

It is easier to do one's duty to others than to one's self. If you do your duty to others, you are considered reliable. If you do your duty to yourself, you are considered selfish.

Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by maudlin sentimentality, but by the higher duty I owe myself.

When we choose for ourselves, we also choose for others.

You need to weigh things up properly in life and ask yourself if it is your call to make, or one to satisfy others.

Another person's life is that person's life. You can't take responsibility.

... it's vastly more irksome to give up one's own way, than to hear a few impertinent remarks.

You are good when you strive to give of yourself. Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself. For when you strive for gain you are but a root that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast. Surely the fruit cannot say to the root, 'Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance.' For to the fruit giving is a need as receiving is a need to the root.

I can only give my life in a way that makes me comfortable.

You can only do two things with your life: give it away or throw it away.

All of us are infected today with an extraordinary egoism. And that is not freedom; freedom means learning to demand only of oneself, not of life and others, and knowing how to give: sacrifice in the name of love.

To be rich is to give; to give nothing is to be poor; to live is to love; to love nothing is to be dead; to be happy is to devote oneself; to exist only for oneself is to damn oneself, and to exile oneself to hell.

I have a right to live my life and just be me with whoever I choose. We just do the best we can.

I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

No one can grant you happiness. Happiness is a choice we all have the power to make.

The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life.

Usually you just use these words: "I give you my, I make this commitment to you, I honor this idea between us." For me, commitment boils down to honor. Because you make a commitment to protect our environment, you make a commitment to species preservation, you make a commitment to stop things like human trafficking. You make a commitment to stop smoking, to eat better. Typically, something that is positive. A positive notion of honor.

Freedom requires responsibility to choose who we are above and beyond our immediate impulses, needs, and social pressures, so that we can genuinely express the type of person we want to be, live the life we truly want to live, leave the legacy we desire.

Who, I ask you, can take, dare take, on himself the rights, the duties, the responsibilities of another human soul?