Peter Keating: "Do you always have to have a purpose? Do you always have to be so damn serious? Can't you ever do things without reason, just like everybody else? You're so serious, so old. Everything's important with you. Everything's great, significant in some way, every minute, even when you keep still. Can't you ever be comfortable-and unimportant?" | Howard Roark: "No."
Ayn RandWhy have you been staring at me ever since we met? Because Iโm not the Gail Wynand youโd heard about. You see, I love you. And love is exception-making. If you were in love youโd want to be broken, trampled, ordered, dominated, because thatโs the impossible, in the inconceivable for you in your relations with people. That would be the one gift, the great exception youโd want to offer the man you loved. But it wouldnโt be easy for you.
Ayn RandTo preserve one's mind intact through a modern college education is a test of courage and endurance, but the battle is worth it and the stakes are the highest possible to man: the survival of reason.
Ayn RandIndividual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority.
Ayn RandIf any part of your uncertainty, is a conflict between your heart and your mind - follow your mind.
Ayn RandThe truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser's intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture's dominant trend is geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.
Ayn Rand