All "public interest' legislation (and any distribution of money taken by force from some men for the unearned benefit of others) comes down ultimately to the grant of an undefined undefinable, non-objective, arbitrary power to some government officials. The worst aspect of it is not that such a power can be used dishonestly, but that it cannot be used honestly. The wisest man in the world, with the purest integrity, cannot find a criterion for the just, equitable, rational application of an unjust, inequitable, irrational principle.

You'll get everything society can give a man. You'll keep all the money. You'll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You'll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I - I'll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt. - Howard Roark

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort ... is not strictly speaking a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang violence.

Ideas, in a free society, are not a crime- and neither can they serve as the justification of a crime.

If you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty.

Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by producing.

You know what you are actually in love with? Integrity. The impossible. The clean, consistent, reasonable, self-faithful, the all-of-one-style, like a work of art.