An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.

But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself.

She watched the prairies the rivers, the towns slipping past at an untouchable distance below - and she noted that the sense of detachment one feels when looking at the earth from a plane was the same sense she felt when looking at people: only her distance from people seemed longer. - Dagny Taggart

Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion...th at in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing-you may know that your society is doomed.

Faith is the wors curse of mankind, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought.

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.