Living in a society, instead of on a desert island, does not relieve a man of the responsibility of supporting his own life.

Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims.

Every man builds his world in his own image; he has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice. If he abdicates his power, he abdicates the status of man, and the grinding chaos of the irrational is what he achieves as his sphere of existence—by his own choice.

Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live.

To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.

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.

America's skyscrapers were not built by public funds nor for a public purpose: they were built by the energy, initiative and wealth of private individuals for personal profit. And, instead of impoverishing the people, these skyscrapers, as they rose higher and higher, kept raising the people's standard of living - including the inhabitants of the slums.