No happy person can be quite so impervious to pain (Gail Wynand to Dominique Francon)

Politically, the goal of today’s dominant trend is statism. Philosophically, the goal is the obliteration of reason; psychologically, it is the erosion of ambition.

I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence.

The worst guilt is to accept an undeserved guilt — and that is what you have been doing all your life.

Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it.

Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he’s honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he’s great in the eyes of others.