Ayn Rand

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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?"

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

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

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

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