Ayn Rand

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

"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."

"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."

"Man is an end in himself."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind."

"When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

"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."

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

"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."

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