Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand

33 quotes

Ayn Rand is a Russian -American writer and philosopher whose words have traveled far beyond their original audience. Their reputation for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system which she named Objectivism lends every quote an extra layer of authority. Our collection holds 49 quotes from Ayn Rand, each offering a different angle on Men, Money, Power, Government, and Society. Readers often gravitate to this one: "When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is."

“Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.”

— Ayn Rand

Money

All Quotes by Ayn Rand

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

— Ayn Rand

Love

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

— Ayn Rand

Money

“So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?”

— Ayn Rand

Money

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

— Ayn Rand

Hope

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

— Ayn Rand

Happiness

“The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

— Ayn Rand

Government

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.”

— Ayn Rand

Life

“The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.”

— Ayn Rand

Men

“When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.”

— Ayn Rand

Learning

“Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.”

— Ayn Rand

Money

“Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.”

— Ayn Rand

Society

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

— Ayn Rand

Motivational

“To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.”

— Ayn Rand

Power

“God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive.”

— Ayn Rand

Faith

“A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.”

— Ayn Rand

Architecture

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.”

— Ayn Rand

Government

“If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.”

— Ayn Rand

Men

“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.”

— Ayn Rand

Men

“Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”

— Ayn Rand

Men

“Do not ever say that the desire to 'do good' by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.”

— Ayn Rand

Good