I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.
Ayn RandThere is no such thing as duty. If you know that a thing is right, you want to do it. If you don't want to do it - it isn't right. If it's right and you don't want to do it - you don't know what right is and you're not a man.
Ayn RandIt was the only thing I ever really wanted. And thatโs the sin that canโt be forgiven--that I hadnโt done what I wanted. It feels so dirty and pointless and monstrous, as one feels about insanity, because thereโs no sense to it, no dignity, nothing but pain--and wasted pain...why do they always teach us that itโs easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? Itโs the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage.
Ayn RandBy what he chooses to present and by how he presents it, any author expresses his fundamental, metaphysical values.
Ayn RandIt's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money.... Let me give you a tip on men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the...bell of an approaching looter.
Ayn Rand