Ayn Rand

When facing society, the man most concerned, the man who is to do the most and contribute the most, has the least say. It's taken for granted that he has no voice and the reasons he could offer are rejected in advance as prejudiced -- since no speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgement on a man than on an idea. Though how in the hell one passes judgement on a man without considering the content of his brain is more than I'll ever understand.

Altruism holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only moral justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty. The political expression of altruism is collectivism or statism, which holds that man's life and work belong to the state - to society, to the group, the gang, the race, the nation - and that the state may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.

He needed the people and the clamour around him. There was no questions and no doubts when he stood on a platform over a sea of faces; the air was heavy, compact, saturated with a single solvent-admiration; there was no room for anything else. He was great; great as the number of people who told him so. He was right; right as the number of people who believed it. He looked at the faces, at the eyes, he saw himself born in them, he saw himself granted the gift of life. That was Peter Keating, that, the reflection in those staring pupils, and his body was only it's reflection.

The age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a prelude to the age of the cave.

You'll get everything society can give a man. You'll keep all the money. You'll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You'll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I - I'll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt. - Howard Roark

She had never done these things before; she did them expertly. She had a capacity for action, a competence that clashed incongruously with her appearance.

He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival, the cats who teach their kittens to hunt, the birds who spend such strident effort on teaching their fledglings to fly _ yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child__ education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think.From the first catch-phrases flung at a child to the last, it is like a series of shocks to freeze his motor, to undercut the power of his consciousness. __on__ ask so many questions, children should be seen and not heard!_ _ __ho are you to think? It__ so, because I say so!_ _ __on__ argue, obey!_ _ __on__ try to understand, believe!_ _ __on__ struggle, compromise!_ _ __our heart is more important than your mind!_ _ __ho are you to know? Your parents know best!_ _ __ho are you to know? The bureaucrats know best!_ _ __ho are you to object? All values are relative!_ _ __ho are you to want to escape a thug__ bullet? That__ only a personal prejudice!__en would shudder, he thought, if they saw a mother bird plucking the feathers from the wings of her young, then pushing him out of the nest to struggle for survival _ yet that was what they did to their children.

One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one__ own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love.

And because she worshipped joy, Kira seldom laughed and did not go to see comedies in theaters. And because she felt a profound rebellion against the weighty, the tragic, the solemn, Kira had a solemn reverence for those songs of defiant gaiety.

Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment__ torture.

He__ not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander__ delusion__restige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded.

The statue was of a young man with a tall, gaunt body and an angular face. He held his head as if he faced a challenge and found joy in his capacity to meet it.

Isn__ it wonderful that our bodies can give us so much pleasure?_ he said to her once, quite simply. They were happy and radiantly innocent. They were both incapable of the conception that joy is sin.

What glory can there be in the conquest of a mindless body?

Sex is the physical expression of a tribute to personal values.

Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives__nd observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy.

The man who despises himself tries to gain self-esteem from sexual adventures __hich can__ be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man__ sense of his own value.

We are those who do not disconnect the values of their minds from the actions of their bodies, those who do not leave their values to empty dreams, but bring them into existence, those who give material form to thoughts, and reality to values.