Ayn Rand

A man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you what he thinks of himself.

The small minority of men who are able to conceive of a new idea are the only men who discover truths. The rest are but the echoes of other men's thoughts.

If a man is right, he has no reason to fear the judgment of others. If he is wrong, he has no reason to wish that judgment withheld.

The truly and the morally evil is the man who always acts for the sake of others.

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 fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.

I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one observes the actual requirements of man’s survival and prosperity, one finds that all three of the foregoing—reason, egoism, capitalism—are indivisible.

Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it.

The worst evil is not the one committed by murderers, but by those who allow murder to happen.

The hardest thing to explain is the obvious.

To say 'I love you' one must first be able to say the 'I.'

The only way to fight a war is to win it.

A desire to be 'normal' is a desire to be mediocre.

An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.

Guilt is a tool of the enslaver.

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.

Man's basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of evading reality.

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.

Individualism is the only possible path to a sane, rational, moral world.