Ayn Rand Quotes

Only on the surface of things have I ever trod the beaten path. So long as I could keep from hurting anyone else, I have lived, as completely as it was possible, the life of my choice. I have been free. . . . I have done the work I wished to do for the sake of that work alone.

I do not want any patronage, as I do not give any. I am a lover of my own liberty, and so I would do nothing to restrict yours. I simply want to please my own conscience which is God.

It's important for me to be free and know I'm acting for myself. I do things because I want to, and that's important. You want to be your own person.

We have built our State on the freedom of personal adventure.

Alaskans are basically 'leave me alone' type people who respect and embrace different strokes.

I am a rank individualist.

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

Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.

The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone.

Liberty is an individual, not a collective, right.

The liberty to live for self alone becomes in time a weary bondage.

I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

Many Americans abhor paternalism. They think that people should be able to go their own way, even if they end up in a ditch. When they run risks, even foolish ones, it isn't anybody's business that they do.

I still want to find a way that leaves people free to live their lives without telling them what to do.

I do what I want, when I want.

No one can be free unless he is independent.

This, then, is freedom in the external life of man-that he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows.

Man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.

Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.” An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.

I don't want to have to start being unselfish again. The great thing about being on your own is you do what you damned well like.

Let's let people live their lives and do it the way they want to do it.

I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?

I feel like an independent man, and I am. This is the kind of feeling I always wanted. You can rarely get that... Well, I could rarely get that in the early part of my life.

As to the American tradition of non-meddling, Anarchism asks that it be carried down to the individual himself.

I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.