30 famous Ayn Rand quotes from some of author’s best works
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. The famous Ayn Rand quotes trending online has made her even more popular. She is best-known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, as well as for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism.
Going through her quotes will keep you inspired, and encouraged, especially if you are dealing with some issues in life. This article articulates 30 of the most famous Ayn Rand quotes from her books and thoughts.
Inspiring Ayn Rand quotes of all time
Do you know any Atlas Shrugged quotes from the brilliant writer, or have a couple of anthem quotes that you can run to for reference every time you need to? Well, Ayn was a great thinker, and her ideas can come in handy. So, which Ayn Rand quote works for you? Well, this may depend on the message and how it impacts your life. Nonetheless, the following examples show how great a writer Rand was.
- Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.
Well, as long as you envision a world that is perfect, you can always create it for yourself.
- My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.
When you make happiness your pursuit, you will do everything to achieve it.
- Do not let your fire go out. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in the lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your read and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
As long as you are not willing to give up then you can achieve all you want in life.
- He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see.
Although every person has a choice in life, they can never run away from the consequences of their choices.
- A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
When you are driven by achievement, then you can get to any height without necessarily competing with others.
- People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all
Lies only make you a slave to the person you lie to. The idea of maintaining the lie makes you enslaved since deviating from the lie paints the liar in a bad light.
- I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.
When you know that life offers you a chance to mold it into whatever you want.
- Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.
Common sense is not obvious as many think.
- I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.
Accepting that tragedy is normal can help you handle all tough situations.
- Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.
More often than not, the availability of two options is what causes friction when there is necessarily no contradictions.
Ayn Rand love quotes
Love is a brilliant theme and a great subject for poets, authors and any creatives to write about. If you love any Anthem Ayn Rand quotes, then you will appreciate these love quotes. You can actually learn a lot from Fountainhead quotes.
- Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person's sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves. No matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! - an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects their deepest vision of themselves — the person whose surrender permits them to experience - or to fake - a sense of self-esteem. Love is our response to our highest values - and can be nothing else.
Do not confuse love with sexual choices. The two cannot be any different. While love is selfless, sex, in most cases is not.
- To say "I love you" one must know first how to say the "I".
Loving others can only stem from loving oneself. Until someone is able to love themselves, it is impossible to share that love with others. After all, you only give what you have in excess.
- 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.
Life is interesting and should only be lived for one's sake. Do not forsake yourself for others.
- Love is the expression of one’s values.
True love can only be seen by how much one values themselves.
Ayn Rand atlas shrugged quotes
Having been a great author, you will probably notice a few of her sayings and even have a favorite Atlas Shrugged quote. The good news is that Ayn Rand quotes Atlas Shrugged will leave you with something to think about. The most popular ones include:
- If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?
- This was reality, she thought, this sense of clear outlines, of purpose, of lightness, of hope.
- There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think
- It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust, but to know.
- Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision.
- My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being.
- By the essence and nature of existence, contradictions cannot exist.
- It was the joy of admiration and of one’s own ability, growing together.
- You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgment and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been called anti-social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads.
- I refuse to apologize for my ability—I refuse to apologize for my success—I refuse to apologize for my money.
- We are on strike against martyrdom—and against the moral code that demands it. We are on strike against those who believe that one man must exist for the sake of another. We are on strike against the morality of cannibals, be it practiced in body or in spirit. We will not deal with men on any terms but ours—and our terms are a moral code which holds that man is an end in himself and not the means to any end of others.
- Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment - on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict ‘It is.
- To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?
- The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter's stomach, is an absolute.
- Don't fool yourself, my dear. You're much worse than a bitch. You're a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable.
- Your fear of death is not a love for life.
The above-mentioned Ayn Rand quotes are some of the best you will come across on the internet. Whether you are thinking about life, or love, you can get a few quotes from the great author.
Source: Legit.ng