"You were not born to be a second-hander." Howard Roark to Gail Wynand in "The Fountainhead"

Rationalization is a cover-up, a process of providing one's emotions with a false identity, of giving them spurious explanations and justifications - in order to hide one's motives, not just from others, but primarily from oneself. The price of rationalizing is the hampering, the distortion, and, ultimately, the destruction of one's cognitive faculty. Rationalization is a process not of perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one's emotions.

When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.

I loathe your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved.

I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline.

What do I "think" of President Reagan? The best answer to give would be: I don't think of him. And the more I see, the less I think.

Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships.