Ayn Rand Quotes

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: "I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live."

Sometimes I wonder if I'm a character being written, or if I'm writing myself.

There is a great suspicion of saying that anyone, especially a child, is 'the product of destiny,' or 'formed by fate,' or 'predestined for a certain life.' I am suspicious, too, of efforts to cage children or adults in preconceived ideas of who they are or should be.

I am I plus my circumstances.

I was looking for what the meaning of life was.

I'm born, and I die, but in between that, I can do whatever I want or have a strong opinion about something.

Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will.

Life is a creation, not a discovery.

Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.

Fatalism, whose solving word in all crises of behavior is All striving is vain, will never reign supreme, for the impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race. Moral creeds which speak to that impulse will be widely successful in spite of inconsistency, vagueness, and shadowy determination of expectancy. Man needs a rule for his will, and will invent one if one be not given him.

The meaning of life is to get meaning for life.

In one sense I feel that my book is a one-woman argument against determinism.

I really believe that 'Saw' makes us stop and think and question our motives and what we're doing here on Earth.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

We breathe, we think, we conceive of our lives as narratives.

I can't always live my life for everybody else.

My life is not to be somebody else's impact - you know what I mean?

Philosophically I am, or at least have been, a follower of Sartre. I am very interested in the choices we make, or don't make, in life-defining matters. That moment of 'angst' and its consequences can be such a cruel thing.

I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.

If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

In a lot of areas of my life, particularly in my teenage years, I began to think about the world, and to think about the universe as being a part of my conscious everyday life.

Your life is yours to live, no matter how you choose to live it. When you do not think about how you intend to live it, it lives you. When you occupy it, step into it consciously, you live it.