“The most part of all princes have more delight in warlike manners and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace.”

“No one, on his deathbed, ever regretted having been a Catholic.”

“The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of...”

“If it be a point of humanity for man to bring health and comfort to man, and especially to mitigate and assuage the grief of others, and by taking from them the sorrow and heaviness of life to rest...”

“Your friend Plato holds that commonwealths will only be happy when either philosophers rule or rulers philosophize: how remote happiness must appear when philosophers won't even deign to share thei...”

“We are all in the same cart, going to execution; how can I hate anyone or wish anyone harm?”

“To be of value to humanity, start by thinking for yourself.”

“Love is not an emotion. It is your very existence.”

“The General belonged to the learned type of military men who believed that liberal and humane views can be reconciled with their profession. But being by nature a kind and intelligent man, he soon ...”

“Dagny," he said, looking at the city as it moved past their taxi window, "think of the first man who thought of making a steel girder. He knew what he saw, what he thought and what he wanted. He di...”

“Our civilization is not Christian. It does not come from the skies. It is not a result of "inspiration." It is the child of invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge -- that is to say, of scien...”

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”

“Men are not gentle and graceful beings solely oriented towards good. They are physical, coarse, contradictory, stretched between desires and temptations. In an unnatural wish to make them sinless a...”

“Lie down beside these watersThat bubble from the spring;Hear in the desert silenceThe desert sparrow sing;Draw from the shapeless momentSuch pattern as you can;And cleave henceforth to Beauty;Expec...”

“The motives of mankind are plainer than the motions they produce.”