Ayn Rand

"And no one rose to ask the question: Good?-by what standard?John Galt."

"And, after all, you’ve got to live.”“Not that way,” said Roark."

"Money is the barometer of a society's virtue."

"What you think is an illusion created by your glands your emotions and in the last analysis by the content of your stomach. That gray matter you're so proud of is like a mirror in an amusement park which transmits to you nothing but distorted signals from reality forever beyond your grasp."

"If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? . . . Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability."

"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 that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt."

"God forgives those who invent what they need."

"Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?"

"The only pride of her workday was not that it had been lived, but that it had been survived. It was wrong, she thought, it was viciously wrong that one should ever be forced to say that about any hour of one's life."

"So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?"

"Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies...It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of 'Value’ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil."

"Now you see, Dr. Stadler, you're speaking as if this book were addressing to a thinking audience. If it were, one would have to be concerned with such matters as accuracy, validity, logic and the prestige of science. But it isn't. It's addressed to the public."