“Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.”

“People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.”

“In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.”

“Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic...”

“It is the lot of mankind to feel not only insecure but also bored. To combat that experience, people long to be passively entertained, which requires less effort than assuming responsibility for se...”

“Once a person has made some sort of stable, symbolic connection between two things, the connection will influence his subsequent behavior and will generate its own 'proof.' This is why it is idle a...”

“There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments there are consequences.”

“You can't hurt me the way you think you can. But even if you could? I would rather die with the taste of you on my tongue than live and never touch you again. I'm in love with you, Mara. I love you...”

“The assumption is that if I expend myself for myself in the end all Ill be left with is myself, and that alone is frightening. But what Ive failed to consider is that I have to expend so much of my...”

“He was, however, unable to give much prolonged or continuous thought to anything that evening , or to concentrate on any one idea; and anyway, even if he had been able to, he would not have found h...”

“Nature can counsel nothing but crime.”

“A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict's suit or a monarch's crown.”

“I do not deny, but strongly affirm, the right of the State to interfere to cure a great evil. I say that in this case it would interfere to create a great evil; and I am not going to be turned from...”

“Scratch a libertarian these days, and you will find...a leftist.”

“Sometimes I fantasize about the US head of state as a super-lazy, super-moral libertarian despot and think, That would certainly make everything easier, even though I cant think of one person whod ...”