Ayn Rand

"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."

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

"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?"

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Man is an end in himself."

"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."