Ayn Rand

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.

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 men to live without breaking laws.

Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.

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.

Do not ever say that the desire to 'do good' by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

Upper classes are a nation's past the middle class is its future.

God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive.

Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.

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.

The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.

A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.

I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.