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Ayn Rand Biography

Ayn Rand (/aɪn/; born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum;[a] February 2 [O.S. January 20] 1905 – March 6, 1982) was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism. Educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. She had a play produced on Broadway in 1935 and 1936. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead. In 1957, Rand published her best-known work, the novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own periodicals and releasing several collections of essays until her death in 1982.

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Ayn Rand Quotes

Do not help your jailers to pretend that their jail is your natural state of existence.

Existence, Helping, Jail, Jailers, Natural

One's own independent judgment is the means by which one must choose one's actions, but it is not a moral criterion nor a moral validation; only reference to a demonstrable principle can validate one's choices.

Choices, Independent, Mean, Reference, Validation

The view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve, my life and my values could not bring me to that.

Achieve, Aspire, Man, Men, Shining, Views

It's because. . . you see, if we had souls, which we haven't, and if our souls met--yours and mine--they'd fight to the death. But after they had torn each other to pieces, to the very bottom, they'd see that they had the same root.

Fighting, Pieces, Roots, Same, Soul, Souls

Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?

Admiration, Admire, Down, Felt, Inspirational, Looks

All work is an act of philosophy.

Philosophy, Work, Act

Under fascism, citizens retain the responsibilities of owning property, without freedom to act and without any of the advantages of ownership. Under socialism, government officials acquire all the advantages of ownership, without any of the responsibilities, since they do not hold title to the property, but merely the right to use it -- at least until the next purge. In either case, the government officials hold the economic, political and legal power of life or death over the citizens.

Government, Life, Merely, Political, Responsibility, Right

When it is established that government by right can take wealth from some and give it to others. When a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law, men will use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they have passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket.

Believe, Brutality, Men, Murderer, Safe, Winning

All public projects are mausoleums, not always in shapes, but always in cost.

Cost, Government, Projects, Public, Shapes

Hence the sterile, uninspiring futility of a great many theoretical discussions of ethics, and the resentment which many people feel towards such discussions: moral principles remain in their minds as floating abstractions, offering them a goal they cannot grasp and demanding that they reshape their souls in its image, thus leaving them with a burden of undefinable moral guilt.

Goal, Offering, People, Principles, Reshape, Undefinable

A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

Accepted, Choice, Choices, Code, Morality, Values

When a man feels fear without reason, you call him to the attention of a psychiatrist; you are not so careful to protect the meaning, the nature and the dignity of love.

Attention, Dignity, Man, Men, Psychiatrist, Reason

The more propaganda. . . conservatives spread for capitalist economics while at the same time preaching collectivism morally and philosophically , the more nails they’ll drive into capitalism’s coffin.

Capitalisms, Coffins, Economics, Nails, Philosophically, Same

There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for me to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt.

Impossible, Innocent Man, Law, Men, Observed, Rule

The more you learn, the more you know that you know nothing.

Inspirational, Inspiring, Know, Learn, Logical, Nothing

The government has created a nation of paper criminals. People can be put in jail and lose civil rights and liberties through bureaucratic procedures. The only thing that is keeping you out of jail is government goodwill.

Government, Jail, People, Rights, Thing

That which is not worth contemplating in life, is not worth recreating in art.

Art, Contemplating, Contemplation, Life, Life Is, Worth

I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life.

Exist, Life, Novelists, Property, Rights, Seek

A rational process is a moral process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest - but if devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.

Act, Cheating, Protect, Rational, Responsibility, Truth

A rational process is a moral process.

Morality, Reason, Process, Moral, Rational

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