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35 Wonderful Atlas Shrugged Quotes

Atlas Shrugged is a beloved fiction novel, that was written by Ayn Rand in the late 1950’s. This book, which was widely disliked when it was first published in 1957, has grown to become a cult classic.

“Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.”

“But there are people who’ll try to hurt you through the good they see in you–knowing that it’s the good, needing it and punishing you for it. Don’t let it break you when you discover that.”

“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”

“Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserve and have never been able to reach.”

“Don’t think of them now. Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. You’re here. It’s our time and our life, not theirs. Don’t struggle
not to be happy. You are.”

“Every living thing must grow. It can’t stand still. It must grow or perish.”

“Guilt is a rope that wears thin.”

“He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another’s personality, marking vulnerable points.”

“I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach.”

“I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard
the struggle.”

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

“I take no pride in hopeless longing; I wouldn’t hold a stillborn aspiration. I’d want to have it, to make it, to live it.”

“I think, therefore I’ll think.”

“If one’s actions are honest, one does not need to predated confidence of others.”

“If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”

“If you tell a beautiful woman that she is beautiful, what have you given her? It’s no more than a fact and it has cost you nothing. But if you tell an ugly woman that she is
beautiful, you offer the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty. ”

“In this world, either you’re virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.”

“It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.”

“It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust but to know.”

“Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental
convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy on life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of
himself.”

“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.”

“Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants.”

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

“Power lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.”

“Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live.”

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil.”

“The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.”

“The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all
the blood that is now spilled in the world.”

“The world you desire can be won. It exists…it is real…it is possible..it’s yours.”

“There are no evil thoughts except one; the refusal to think.”

“To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She’s earned it, it’s a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake, and that is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity, and you invaluable self esteem.”

“What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing?”

“When I die I hope to go to heaven, whatever that is, and I want to be able to afford the price of admission.”


The Youtube video above, is the trailer for one of the Atlas Shrugged movies that was recently made. These movies have managed to put a real life image of the events in the novel into our minds.

Thanks for checking out these great Atlas Shrugged quotes!

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