This is pity,” he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.

Don't consider our interests or desires. You have no duty to anyone but yourself.

The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be.

I agree that [marriage] should be treated like a business deal. But every business deal has to have its own terms and its own kind of currency.

Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

No happy person can be quite so impervious to pain (Gail Wynand to Dominique Francon)