"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve,
not by the desire to beat others."
"A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve
it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving."
"Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose
of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence,
is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result
of your loyalty to the achievement of your values."
"Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death."
"Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness
should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here
and now and on this earth."
"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first
steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision."
"To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you
are doing and that's real power."
"Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is
its future."
"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion:
the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while
the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest
periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
"Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics
- a rational ethics - as a precondition of rebirth."
"Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the
power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice."
"Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun
begins."
"From the smallest necessity to the highest religious
abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything
we have comes from one attribute of man - the function of his reasoning
mind."
"God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond
man's power to conceive."
"Government "help" to business is just as disastrous as
government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to
national prosperity is by keeping its hands off."
"Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds
from the achievement of one's values."
"I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients
in order to build."
"I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never
live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
"It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice,
there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service,
there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is
speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master."
"Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights
can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to
think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property."
"Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest
reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character
and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives
from the virtues of another."
"Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive
by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting
his background to himself."
"Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's
stupidity, but your talent to their reason."
"Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver."
Written by Ayn Rand
