Andrei, did you like the opera?" "Not particularly." "Andrei, do you see what you're missing?" "I don't think I do, Kira. It's all rather silly. And useless." "Can't you enjoy things that are useless, merely because they are beautiful?" "No. But I enjoyed it." "The music?" "No. The way you listened to it.
Ayn Rand
Related To know the way, we go the way, we do the way. The way we do, the things we do... BENJAMIN HOFF Do you think I'm pretty?” He regarded me with utter seriousness, like he always did. "I... RICHELLE MEAD Missing you, I missed a part of me I shared with you that’s now gone. M... KAMAND KOJOURI what do you miss do they miss you when they're around do they support your peace R.H. SIN Do you think I'm pretty? I think you're beautiful Beautiful? You are so beautiful, it... RICHELLE MEAD DON'T SAY, DO Do not say things You think I want to hear. Instead, S... SUZY KASSEM You say I am repeating Something I have said before. I shall say it again. Shall I say it... T.S. ELIOT I felt ashamed." "But of what? Psyche, they hadn't stripped you naked or anything?" ... C.S. LEWIS i want to apologize to all the women i have called beautiful before i’ve called them intellig... RUPI KAUR You should read something else." Why would he have done that to him?" I don't know," she s... NICHOLAS SPARKS People are not an interruption of our business. People are our business. A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes. It is hard to look up to a leader who keeps his ear to the ground. The most wasted day of all is that in which we have not laughed. The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he discovers in men. Ordinary people see no diff... The intelligence is proved not by ease of learning, but by understanding what we learn. Communication is something so simple and difficult that we can never put it in simple words. Like threads of silver seen through crystal beads Let love through good deeds show. How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it. In everyone's heart stirs a great homesickness. That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it. Our wisdom comes usually from our experience, and our experience comes largely from our experience. One thing about the school of experience is that it will repeat the lesson if you flunk the first ti... To reprove small faults within due vehemence, is as absurd as if a man should take a great hammer to... Faith is like electricity. You can't see it, but you can see the light. Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it by the handle of anxiety, or by the handle of... Some families can trace their ancestors back three hundred years, but can't tell you where their chi... A recent survey was said to prove that the people we Americans most admire are our politicians and d... If a man defrauds you one time, he is a rascal; if he does it twice, you are a fool. Flattery looks like friendship, just like a wolf looks like a dog. Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. Courage is always greatest when blended with meekness; intellectual ability is most admired when it ... Freedom also includes the right to mismanage your own affairs. Let your friends be the friends of your deliberate choice. The man who has strong opinions and always says what he thinks is courageous - and friendless. Friendship is love with understanding. So few people think. When we find one who really does, we call him a genius Your life can't go according to plan if you have no plan. Practicing the Golden Rule is not a sacrifice; it is an investment. Conversation is an exercise of the mind; gossip is merely an exercise of the tongue. An expert gossiper knows how much to leave out of a conversation To live so that you would not be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip, is to have li... Gossip is sometimes referred to as halitosis of the mind If you would attain greatness, think no little thoughts. We are born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy. People are changed, not by coercion or intimidation, but by example. Children are natural mimics; they act like their parents in spite of every effort to teach them good... The guilty catch themselves. Good habits are formed; bad habits we fall into. If happiness could be brought, few of us could pay the price. Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have. Happiness is in the heart, not in the circumstances. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. Hatred is a boomerang which is sure to hit you harder than the one at whom you throw it. Hate pollutes the mind. If we miraculously became the people we hate, how lovable we would find ourselves. To feel "fit as a fiddle" you must tone down your middle. Our health always seems much more valuable after we lose it. A patient going to a doctor for his first visit was asked, "And whom did you consult before coming t... "Oh," replied his patient, with no malice aforethought, "he told me to come and see you." It is impossible to make wisdom hereditary. Honesty is a question of right or wrong, not a matter of policy. It is a pleasure to give advice, humiliating to need it, normal to ignore it. It is almost impossible to smile on the outside without feeling better on the inside. Too many people confine their exercise to jumping to conclusions, running up bills, stretching the t... Imagination was given man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humor to console him for ... Humor - the perfect relationship of the parts to the whole. Our five senses are incomplete without the sixth - a sense of humor. "What made the deepest impression upon you?" inquired a friend one day of Lincoln, "when you stood i... It isn't easy for an idea to squeeze itself into a head filled with prejudice. Too many people run out of ideas long before they run out of words. Imagination is the pontoon bridge making way for the timid feet of reason. Practical observation commonly consists of collecting a few facts and loading them with guesses. Friendship is a living thing that lasts only as long as it is nourished with kindness, empathy and u... Having supplied them with names, omnipotence, justice, knowledge, Providence, - what are they? A good laugh is sunshine in a house. When you laugh, be sure to laugh at what people do and not at what people are. One look around us ought to show that all our arbitrary measures and bounds have been clamped on us ... No punishment of the unrighteous has ever been too severe in the eyes of the righteous. Why keep on enacting laws when we already have more than we can break. The best leader is the one who has the sense to surround himself with outstanding people and self-re... Advice is the only commodity on the market where the supply always exceeds the demand. Successful men follow the same advice they prescribe for others. You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea Old age may seem a long way off. But on the day it doesn't, it will be too late to do anything about... Age withers only the outside. Where ambition ends happiness begins. The best answer to answer to anger is silence. The size of a man is measured by the size of the thing that makes him angry. A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about. People who know the least always argue the most. If you look for the positive things in life; you will find them. What we are doing at the moment is more that just one thing added to the rest; it is a memoir. Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes The human mind must believe in something, so why not let it believe what it does believe. He that boasts of his own knowledge proclaims his ignorance It is better to live richly than to die rich. On his examination paper a boy wrote, "A natural death is where you die by yourself without a doctor... Many things are worse than defeat,and compromise with evil is one of them. Desire for security keeps littleness little and threatens the great with smallness.
More Ayn Rand
Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. AYN RAND Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public... AYN RAND The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me. AYN RAND The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it. AYN RAND The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity. AYN RAND Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain o... AYN RAND To say 'I love you' one must first be able to say the 'I.' AYN RAND Envy is the only name she could find for the monstrous thing she faced, but it was much worse... AYN RAND Love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one's own values in the person of ... AYN RAND Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law. AYN RAND I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build. AYN RAND Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. AYN RAND Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises.... AYN RAND He had always wanted to write Music and he could give no other identity to the thing he sought. If y... AYN RAND Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. AYN RAND To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power. AYN RAND America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive g... AYN RAND Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a paymen... AYN RAND Im waiting, for what, my kind of people, what kind is that, i can tell my kind of people by their fa... AYN RAND The American businessmen, as a class, have demonstrated the greatest productive genius and the most ... AYN RAND There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on... AYN RAND The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me. AYN RAND It's easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an au... AYN RAND People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an ac... AYN RAND ...Aren’t they all acting on a selfish motive—to be noticed, liked, admired?” “—by ot... AYN RAND Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live-... AYN RAND Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, i... AYN RAND Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, t... AYN RAND Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but t... AYN RAND Do you know the hallmark of a second rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement. Those touc... AYN RAND Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but... AYN RAND Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you?" He answered, "Not yet. The reason my... AYN RAND People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too ... Refl... AYN RAND She thought how strange it would be if she ever said 'Hello' to him. One did not greet oneself each ... AYN RAND I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place. AYN RAND Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline t... AYN RAND Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing. AYN RAND I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you...Only my love- not your answer. Not... AYN RAND If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. AYN RAND I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you. AYN RAND To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I.’ The meaning of the ‘I’ is an... AYN RAND Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness. AYN RAND To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion. AYN RAND The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live. AYN RAND This is the difference between my morality and hedonism. The standard is not: that is good which giv... AYN RAND Man's consciousness is his least known and most abused vital organ. Most people believe that conscio... AYN RAND What is a demanding pleasure that demands the use of ones mind! Not in the sense of problem solving,... AYN RAND A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom. AYN RAND Do not consider Collectivists as sincere but deluded idealists. The proposal to enslave some men for... AYN RAND The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man'... AYN RAND A chronic lack of pleasure, of any enjoyable, rewarding or stimulating experiences, produces a slow,... AYN RAND All public interest legislation (and any distribution of money taken by force from some men for the ... AYN RAND If you agree with some tenets of Objectivism, but disagree with others, do not call yourself an Obje... AYN RAND Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property righ... AYN RAND There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist. AYN RAND That which you call your soul or spirit is your conciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is... AYN RAND The question isn't 'who is going to let me '; it's 'who is going to stop me '. AYN RAND An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man's value premises. An effect, not a c... AYN RAND Upper classes are a nation's past, the middle class its future. AYN RAND The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to ... AYN RAND Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics -- a rational ethics -- as a precondition... AYN RAND I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build. AYN RAND When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will lear... AYN RAND Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but... AYN RAND From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, ... AYN RAND It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial of... AYN RAND People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is lo... AYN RAND So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money? AYN RAND "Mediocrity" doesn't mean average intelligence, it means an average intelligence that resents and en... AYN RAND Contrary to the vulgar belief that men are motivated primarily by materialistic considerations, we n... AYN RAND Thinking men cannot be ruled. AYN RAND "Mediocrity" doesn't mean average intelligence, it means an average intelligence that resents and en... AYN RAND Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death. AYN RAND Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you... AYN RAND Reality confronts man with a great many "musts," but all of them are conditional; the formula of rea... AYN RAND The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't e... AYN RAND America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to "the common good", but by the productive... AYN RAND Capitalism is our only moral system. All other systems take advantage of man's rights and liberties... AYN RAND Government "help" to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a gove... AYN RAND A government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of p... AYN RAND Art is too serious to be taken seriously. AYN RAND ...The purpose of man's life...is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know,... AYN RAND A culture is made -- or destroyed -- by its articulate voices. AYN RAND Man is a being with free will; therefore, each man is potentially good or evil, and it's up to him a... AYN RAND Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. AYN RAND Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no m... AYN RAND We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality AYN RAND To say "I love you" one must know first how to say the "I". AYN RAND When personal judgment is inoperative (or forbidden), men's first concern is not how to choose, but ... AYN RAND There is only one path to Heaven. On Earth, we call it Love. AYN RAND Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or w... AYN RAND Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own c... AYN RAND Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is... AYN RAND A house can have integrity, just like a person,' said Roark, 'and just as seldom. AYN RAND Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burnt at the stake... AYN RAND Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one’s consciou... AYN RAND Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishono... AYN RAND Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. AYN RAND The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone. AYN RAND Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights ... AYN RAND If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject. AYN RAND Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopol... AYN RAND The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren'... AYN RAND Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. AYN RAND The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see. AYN RAND The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to b... AYN RAND The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt. AYN RAND To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power. AYN RAND When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand a... AYN RAND Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independenc... AYN RAND Don't fool yourself, my dear. You're much worse than a bitch. You're a saint. Which shows why saints... AYN RAND I don't want to see you. I don't like you. I don't like your face. You look like an insufferable ego... AYN RAND There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another ... AYN RAND Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their bac... AYN RAND From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, ... AYN RAND Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave th... AYN RAND We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free ... AYN RAND Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. AYN RAND A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. AYN RAND Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's be... AYN RAND Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today. AYN RAND Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to... AYN RAND Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction... AYN RAND No, you do not have to live as a man; it is an act of moral choice. But you cannot live as anything ... AYN RAND Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth a... AYN RAND Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing... AYN RAND The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the m... AYN RAND I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask a... AYN RAND We are all brothers under the skin - and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it. AYN RAND Government 'help' to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only wa... AYN RAND Of course I need you. I go insane when I see you. You can do almost anything you wish with me. Is th... AYN RAND He, too, stood looking at her for a moment--and it seemed to her that it was not a look of greeting ... AYN RAND She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the wo... AYN RAND The right to vote is a *consequence*, not a primary cause, of a free social system -- and its value ... AYN RAND Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future. AYN RAND Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ru... AYN RAND Get the hell out of my way! AYN RAND The common good of a collective -- a race, a class, a state -- was the claim and justification of ev... AYN RAND The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence. AYN RAND The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the mor... AYN RAND The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it. AYN RAND It is not advisable, James, to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrass... AYN RAND Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. ... AYN RAND That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call 'free will' i... AYN RAND Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take pre... AYN RAND Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of mans val... AYN RAND I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask ano... AYN RAND I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanctio... AYN RAND The upper classes are... a nation's past; the middle class is its future. AYN RAND Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday...The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant... AYN RAND Learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness. AYN RAND Guilt is a rope that wears thin. AYN RAND Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values. AYN RAND Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An ... AYN RAND To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his li... AYN RAND There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is alw... AYN RAND The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: everything man needs has to be ... AYN RAND A house can have integrity, just like a person AYN RAND In that world, you'll be able to rise in the morning with the spirit you had known in your childhood... AYN RAND Rights are not a matter of numbers - and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actio... AYN RAND They proclaim that every man is entitled to exist without labor and, the laws of reality to the cont... AYN RAND To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to n... AYN RAND We are born into this world unarmed---our mind is our only weapon. AYN RAND Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the... AYN RAND When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is. AYN RAND Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason. AYN RAND There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permit... AYN RAND He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival, the cats who tea... AYN RAND "Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is th... AYN RAND An Individualist is a man who lives for his own sake and by his own mind; he neither sacrifices hims... AYN RAND Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the ... AYN RAND If you tell a beautiful woman that she is beautiful, what have you given her? It's no more than a fa... AYN RAND We are on strike, we, the men of the mind. We are on strike against self-immolation. We a... AYN RAND All I mean is that a board of directors is one or two ambitious men--and a lot of ballast. I mean th... AYN RAND If you write a line of zeroes, it´s still nothing. AYN RAND Observe how many people evade, rationalize and drive their minds into a state of blind stupor, in dr... AYN RAND If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood ru... AYN RAND Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future. AYN RAND Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed. AYN RAND It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrif... AYN RAND Beauty is a sense of harmony. AYN RAND Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments. AYN RAND At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings... AYN RAND Dagny leaned back in her chair. The short sentence was a shock. It was not merely relief: it was the... AYN RAND In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are at its worst. In th... AYN RAND When you are in love, it means that the person you love is of great personal, selfish importance to ... AYN RAND I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and s... AYN RAND If this is vise I want no virtue. ... I know what happiness is possible to me ... AYN RAND A man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions.... He will always be... AYN RAND He, too, stood looking at her for a moment--and it seemed to her that it was not a look of greeting ... AYN RAND Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human l... AYN RAND Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental ... AYN RAND But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself. AYN RAND Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is
the man who disagr... AYN RAND He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another's... AYN RAND The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave. AYN RAND The purpose of the law is not to prevent a future offense, but to punish the one actually committed AYN RAND Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one'... AYN RAND The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted ... AYN RAND The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it. - Atlas Shrugged AYN RAND