I got the idea [for Anthem's theme] in my school days, in Soviet Russia, when I heard all the vicious attacks on individualism, and asked myself what the world would be like if men lost the word 'I.'

It's such a waste to be subtle and vicious with people who don't even know that you're being subtle and vicious

Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

She sat leaning back in her chair, looking ahead, knowing that he was as aware of her as she was of him. She found pleasure in the special self-consciousness it gave her. When she crossed her legs, when she leaned on her arm against the window sill, when she brushed her hair off her forehead - every movement of her body was underscored by a feeling the unadmitted words for which were: Is he seeing it?

If the truth shall kill them, let them die.

The entire history of science is a progression of exploded fallacies.

To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.