I say that man is entitled to his own happiness and that he must achieve it himself. But that he cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy.

Do not set out to write with your eyes on the box office. It can't be done.

It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man's proper stature-and the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning-and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or "The Fountainhead" that they will betray: it is their own souls.

A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.

Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.

What is man? He's just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur.

For the first time since her return, she felt pain, a violent pain, but it made her feel alive, because it was worth feeling.