Ayn Rand

"Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values."

"Man is an end in himself."

"I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between."

"If that which we have found is the corruption of solitude, then what can men wish for save corruption? If this is the great evil of being alone, than what is good and what is evil?"

"Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?"

"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."

"And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: 'I."

"In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit."

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."

"The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it."

"Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want."

"Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential."

"Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today."

"Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration."

"A culture is made — or destroyed — by its articulate voices."

"Every form of happiness if one, every desire is driven by the same motor--by our love for a single value, for the highest potentiality of our own existence--and every achievement is an expression of it."

"The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles."

"Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want."

"A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist."

"The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity."