Rights are not a matter of numbers - and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.

Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it.

She looked at the crowd and she felt simultaneously astonishment that they should stare at her when this event was so personally her own that no communication about it was possible and a sense of fitness that they should be here that they should want to see it. Because the sight of an achievement was the greatest gift a human being could offer to others.

"Mediocrity" doesn't mean average intelligence, it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters.

There's nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.

Look around you and look at history. You will see the achievements of man’s mind. You will see man’s unlimited potentiality for greatness, and the faculty that makes it possible. You will see that man is not a helpless monster by nature, but he becomes one when he discards that faculty: his mind. And if you ask me, what is greatness? I will answer, it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.

You'd let the whole world perish rather than soil that immaculate self of yours with a single spot of which you'd have to be ashamed.