“We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma ...”

“People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been--for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been a...”

“Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-...”

“Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live--that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a const...”

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for...”

“Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.”

“Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinkingthat the mind is ...”

“Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape itthat no substitute can do your thinkingthat the vilest form of self-abasem...”

“No, you do not have to live as a man; it is an act of moral choice. But you cannot live as anything elseand the alternative is that state of living death which you now see within you and around you...”

“Why have you been staring at me ever since we met? Because Im not the Gail Wynand youd heard about. You see, I love you. And love is exception-making. If you were in love youd want to be broken, tr...”

“To sum it all up, the [Ayn] Rand belief system looks like this:1. Facts are facts: things can be absolutely right or absolutely wrong, as determined by reason.2. According to my reasoning, I am abs...”

“What separates Rand from Marx is that the latter saw the true flourishing of individual creativity as best accomplished through collaboration and association with others in a collective drive to ab...”

“I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.”

“Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”

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