Ayn Rand

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

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

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

"An inventor is a man who asks 'Why?' of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind."

"Man is an end in himself."

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

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

"Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear."

"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."

"An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes."

"Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man."

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

"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."

"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."

"Man is an end in himself."

"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."

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

"Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness."

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