Ayn Rand

The greatest good for the greatest number is a contemptible doctrine.

The most selfish of all things is the human mind.

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

The moral purpose of a man's life is the achievement of his own happiness.

The man who is unwilling to accept responsibility for his own life has no right to demand that others take responsibility for him.

The man who is unwilling to sacrifice for his own happiness has no right to demand that others sacrifice for his happiness.

The government is not a babysitter.

A man without a purpose is a ship without a rudder.

I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

Since man has to be supported by his own effort, those who do not support themselves are living off the efforts of others.

The ideal man is the man of reason, the man who is guided by his mind and is not swayed by his emotions.

A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a motive from which to act.

Never think that a man who is too busy for you has time for you.

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.

Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.

Reason is man's only proper means of acquiring knowledge.

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fight.