Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged and founder of Objectivism, was nothing less than a controversial figure. Rand amassed a large following in the 1950s and established the principles that would influence many modern conservatives which promoted individualism, reason, and selfishness, while opposing socialism, collectivism, and altruism. The popular philosopher lived a life of contradictions. Rand asserted her reliance on reason over irrationality but decried evidence of the links between smoking and cancer. She scathingly opposed programs from The New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, and welfare. Hypocritically, Rand was enrolled in Medicare and Social Security before she died of lung cancer.
1. “Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.”
2. “The worst evil that you can do, psychologically, is to laugh at yourself. That means spitting in your own face.”
3. “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”
4. “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.”
5. “If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.”
6. “In the temple of his spirit, each man is alone.”
7. “Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.”
8. “Do you know that my personal crusade in life (in the philosophical sense) is not merely to fight collectivism, nor to fight altruism? These are only consequences, effects, not causes. I am out after the real cause, the real root of evil on earth — the irrational.”
9. “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 recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.”
10. “What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.”
11. “I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.”
12. “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.”
13. “To say ‘I love you’ one must first be able to say the ‘I.’”
14. “Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.”
15. “Man’s unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.”
16. “People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don’t sit looking at it – walk.”
17. “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.”