Objectivism Quotes

Indifference to me, is the epitome of all evil.

I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we con...

Let's say I have a mystical soul and a rational brain, and, like Montaigne, I am incapable of choosi...

Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience al...

To sum it all up, the [Ayn] Rand belief system looks like this:1. Facts are facts: things can be abs...

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

Man is an end in himself.

Charity must be voluntary.

Every form of happiness if one, every desire is driven by the same motor--by our love for a single v...

When the law no longer protects you from the corrupt, but protects the corrupt from you – you know y...

He tried to explain and to convince. He knew, while he spoke, that it was useless, because his words...

Socialism may be established by force, as in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—or by vote, as ...

To irrational principles, one cannot be loyal. Ideas that are not derived from reality cannot be con...

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

Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from...

We, Equality 7-2521, were not happy in those year in the Home of the Students. It was not that the l...

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

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

Your moral code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines...

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

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...

And no one rose to ask the question: Good?-by what standard?John Galt

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...

Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s valu...

We are born into this world unarmed - our mind is our only weapon.

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

I take no pride in hopeless longing; I wouldn't hold a stillborn aspiration. I'd want to have it, to...

I think, therefore I'll think.

Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of...

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

Who is John Galt?

Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of ...

The view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever...

I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highes...

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

There might be some sort of justification for the savage societies in which a man had to expect that...

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

Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not ma...

Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on ot...

No! I don't want to speak of that! But I'm going to. I want you to hear. I want you to know what's i...

The age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a prelude...

A desire to choose the hardest might be a confession of weakness in itself.

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but t...

Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking ...

One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is ...

I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US ...