My greatest personal mistake is ever to allow a word or moment that โdoesnโt count,โ i.e., that I do not refer to my own basic principles. Every word, every action, every moment counts. (This is the pattern on which everybody makes mistakes [or] becomes irrational โ not relating their one action or one conviction to another.
Ayn RandRemember that rights are moral principles which define and protect a man's freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other men.
Ayn RandThrough all the centuries of the worship of the mindless, whatever stagnation humanity chose to endure, whatever brutality to practice-it was only by the grace of the men who perceived that wheat must have water in order to grow, that stones laid in a curve will form an arch, that two and two make four, that love is not served by torture and life is not fed by destruction-only by the grace of those men did the rest of them learn to experience moments when they caught the spark of being human.
Ayn Rand