Atlas-shrugged Quotes

Indifference to me, is the epitome of all evil.

She had been proved right so eloquently, she had thought, that comments were unnecessary.

The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, ...

Do you know what she did today?" He leaned confidentially across the table, pointing at the dishes i...

While a creator does and must worship Man (which means his own highest potentiality; which is his na...

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

Well, whose opinion did you take?”“I don’t ask for opinions.”“What do you go by?”“Judgment.”“Well, w...

They scattered with no melody, no harmony, no rhythm to hold them. If music was emotion and emotion ...

No action could be lower or more futile than for one person to throw upon another the burden of his ...

Señor d.‘Anconia, what do you think is going to happen to the world?”“Just exactly what it deserves....

It seemed natural; natural to the moment’s peculiar reality that was sharply clear, but cut off from...

It was as if a volcano were cracking open, yet the people at the foot of the mountain ignored the su...

Whenever anyone accuses some person of being ‘unfeeling,’ he means that that person is just. He mean...

They said you were hard and cold and unfeeling.”“But it’s true...I am, in the sense they mean—only h...

Do you know the hallmark of a second rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement. Those touc...

...there’s nothing of any importance in life—except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. W...

Thought—he told himself quietly—is a weapon one uses in order to act. No action was possible. Though...

...they want us to pretend that we see the world as they pretend they see it. They need some sort of...

If, to him, love was a celebration of one’s self and of existence—then, to the self-haters and life-...

If that’s the price of getting together, then I’ll be damned if I want to live on the same earth wit...

...she stood beside him, sagging in his arms, abandoning herself to anything he wished, in open ackn...

Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the ...

The capacity for unclouded enjoyment, she thought, does not belong to irresponsible fools; an inviol...

She wanted to tell him of the years she had spent looking for men such as he to work with; she wante...

Such was the code that the world had accepted and such was the key to the code: that it hooked man’s...

To think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call ‘human nature,’ the open secret...

Throughout his life, whenever he became convinced that a course of action was right, the desire to f...

No, justice has not ceased to exist. How could it? It is possible for men to abandon their sight of ...

Man’s life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless brute, of a looting thug or a m...

Man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes...

Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is t...

Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the sour...

The anti-mind is the anti-life.

A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course of behavior. He needs a code of values t...

A rational process is a moral process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to prot...

A process of reason is a process of constant choice in answer to the question: True or False? - Righ...

Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. ...

There is a morality of reason, a morality proper to man, and Man’s Life is its standard of value.All...

To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent t...

That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call ‘free will’ i...

Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action,...

Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world...

Reality is that which exists; the unreal does not exist; the unreal is merely that negation of exist...

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice — and the alternative hi...

Logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification...

Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.

By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man—every man—is an end in himself, he exists for hi...

Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of con...

Sweep aside those hatred-eaten mystics, who pose as friends of humanity and preach that the highest ...

Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free t...

To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an enti...

Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason is his only means to gain it. Reason is t...

No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it. It is o...

This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence...

Man’s life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose . If existence on earth is ...

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his h...

Reason is your means of survival — so that for you, who are a human being, the question ‘to be or no...

There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in ...

When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; wh...

You always play it open, don’t you?” he asked.“I’ve never noticed you doing otherwise.”“I thought I ...

Nothing can justify injustice.

...there was no guilt in his face, no doubt, nothing but the calm of an inviolate self-confidence.

As she looked at him, her dark gray eyes went slowly from astonishment to stillness, then to a stran...

What’s wealth but the means of expanding one’s life? There’s two ways one can do it: either by produ...

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth a...

Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing...

No, you do not have to live as a man; it is an act of moral choice. But you cannot live as anything ...

Man’s mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given t...

...dangers, to Francisco, were merely opportunities for another brilliant performance; there were no...

It does take an exceptional mind and a still more exceptional integrity to remain untouched by the b...

When the train stopped, when she got off and heard the concrete of the platform under her heels, she...

...were she lying crushed under the ruins of a building, were she torn by the bomb of an air raid, s...

There is no conflict, and no call for sacrifice, and no man is a threat to the aims of another—if me...

Through all the ages the mind has been regarded as evil, and every form of insult: from heretic to m...

Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match ...

She survived it. She was able to survive it, because she did not believe in suffering. She faced wit...

The source of work? Man’s mind...man’s reasoning mind.

It’s not that I don’t suffer, it’s that I know the unimportance of suffering, I know that pain is to...

Whenever a man denounces the mind, it is because his goal is of a nature the mind would not permit h...

It was the smile of a man who is able to see, to know and to create the glory of existence. It was t...

Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show...

...he had acquired the conviction that one had to concern oneself with the rational, not the insane—...

He saw for the first time that he had never known fear because, against any disaster, he had held th...

...he had never known fear because, against any disaster, he had held the omnipotent cure of being a...

He did not know that he was expected to attempt to buy his way into society and that they anticipate...

...there can be no justification for a society in which a man is expected to manufacture the weapons...

I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It i...

He saw the article...which was not an expression of ideas, but a bucket of slime emptied in public—a...

They say that it’s hard for men to agree. You’d be surprised how easy it is—when both parties hold a...

Incredulity and indifference were her only reaction: incredulity, because she could not conceive of ...

Don’t tell me your evaluation. Give me the facts.

He knew that the dread in these men’s minds was not of the fact, but of his naming it—as if the fact...

The things you were talking about. The lights and the flowers. Do they expect those things to make t...

The only thing that counts in life is solid, material assets. It's no time for theories when everyth...

Are you saying,” he asked slowly, “that I rose in your estimation when you found that I wanted you?”...

Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it. A being who does ...

Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two—existence and consciousness—are axioms you cannot e...

The statue was of a young man with a tall, gaunt body and an angular face. He held his head as if he...

You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed...

Dagny leaned back in her chair. The short sentence was a shock. It was not merely relief: it was the...