The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.

You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgement and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been calle anti social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads.

The leaves streamed down, trembling in the sun. They were not green, only a few, scattered through the torrent, stood out in single drops of green so bright and pure that it hurt the eyes; the rest were not a color, but a light, the substance of fire on metal, living sparks without edges. And it looked as if the forest were a spread of light boiling slowly to produce this color, the green rising in small bubbles, the condensed essence of spring. The trees met, blending over the road and the spots of sun on the ground moved with the shifting of the branches, like a conscious caress.

Altruism does not mean mere kindness or generosity, but the sacrifice of the best among men to the worst, the sacrifice of virtues to flaws, of ability to incompetence, of progress to stagnation-and the subordinating of all life and of all values to the claims of anyone's suffering.

The mark of an honest man... is that he means what he says and knows what he means.

Collectivism, as an intellectual power and a moral ideal, is dead. But freedom and individualism, and their political expression, capitalism, have not yet been discovered.

Dagny, we can never lose the things we live for. We may have to change their form at times, if we've made an error, but the purpose remains the same and the forms are ours to make.