Home » Quotes » 31 Splendid Ayn Rand Quotes

31 Splendid Ayn Rand Quotes

Ayn Rand is a philosopher and novelist from St. Petersburg, Russia. She began writing in the mid 1940’s and gained much acclaim through her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Sadly she died at the age of 77 in 1982. Below is a collection of just some of her most beautiful and brilliant quotes.

“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not the desire to beat others.”

“A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it hold a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.”

“Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.”

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not quite, not yet, and the not at all.”

“Ever if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death.”

“Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics – a rational ethics – as a precondition of rebirth.”

“Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.”

“Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.”

“Free competition enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms.”

“Guilt is a rope that wears thin.”

“Happiness is the state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.”

“I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.”

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

“Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.”

“Man’s unique reward however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.”

“Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason.”

“Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.”

“Price is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned.”

“She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.”

“Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday…The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production.”

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

“The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.”

“The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”

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

“There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non conformist.”

“To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that’t real power.”

“To say ‘I love you’ one must first be able to say the ‘I’.”

“What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reasons, purpose, self esteem.”

“You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated.”


In this captivating video, the very first first public interview with the mastermind, Ayn Rand, was captured.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this wonderful collection of Ayn Rand quotes!

About The Author
Although millions of people visit Brandon's blog each month, his path to success was not easy. Go here to read his incredible story, "From Disabled and $500k in Debt to a Pro Blogger with 5 Million Monthly Visitors." If you want to send Brandon a quick message, then visit his contact page here.