Dagny, we can never lose the things we live for. We may have to change their form at times, if we've made an error, but the purpose remains the same and the forms are ours to make.

I don’t approve of religion.

Through all the years that I spent formulating my philosophical system, I was looking desperately for “intelligent agreement” or at least for “intelligent disagreement.” I found neither. Today, I am not looking for “intelligent disagreement” any longer ... What I am looking for is intelligent agreement.

A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue.

The writer who develops a beautiful style, but has nothing to say, represents a kind of arrested esthetic development; he is like a pianist who acquires a brilliant technique by playing finger-exercises, but never gives a concert.

Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel.

[Altruism] is a moral system which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the sole justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, value and virtue. This is the moral base of collectivism, of all dictatorships.