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.

When you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately, that is to love people without any standard, to love them regardless of whether they have any value or virtue, you are asked to love nobody.

Ferris: Are you going to be as impractical as that? Rearden: The evaluation of an action as practical, Dr. Ferris, depends on what it is that one wishes to practice. Ferris: Haven't you always placed your self-interest above all else? Rearden: That is what I am doing right now.

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.

Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man's first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.

Civilization does not have to perish. The brutes are winning only by default.

There is no such thing as a lousy job - only lousy men who don't care to do it.