“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.”

“He stepped to the window and pointed to the skyscrapers of the city. He said that we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when we would see the lights of New York go out, we would know th...”

“Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned.His own happiness is man’s only moral purpose, but only his own virtue ca...”

“He stepped to the window and pointed to the skyscrapers of the city. He said that we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when we would see the lights of New York go out, we would know th...”

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

“Your moral code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practiceIt demands that he starts, not with a standard of value, but wi...”

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

“Nothing is as it seems, but something is everything it is made out to be.”

“Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?”

“You'd be surprised how easy some things can be, things you never thought you'd do, when you take self-respect out of the equation.”