Atlas Shrugged Quotes

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all.

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

I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.

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

People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies.

The one thing I know how to do is to make things move faster.

Why is it so hard for you to understand that in this world there are things much more important and honorable than making money?

But you see, I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working.

Sacrifice is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority.

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

Atlas Shrugged Quotes part 2

Evil requires the sanction of the victim.

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.

It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.

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

There is no such thing as a lousy job – only lousy men who don’t care to do it.

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.

The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.

The world you desire can be won. It exists… it is real… it is possible… it’s yours.

I know that life is given to us as a temporary loan, that the time for repayment will come, and that death is the creditor.

We are on strike against looters who use the power of the state and hold us in contempt for being productive, while they sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Any man who has ever been worth anything has been the architect of his own fortune.

The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be.

There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: that of the fashionable non-conformist.

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.

Society’s defenders of the status quo are always stronger than its critics.

I do not think that I will ever reach a stage when I will say, This is what I believe. Finished.

The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.

To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life.

When I told you that, if you want to know how you’ll be in seven years – look at your dreams… I meant, to know your own future, just look inside yourself.

The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.

In order to live, man must act.

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us.

It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.

To choose one’s victims, to prepare one’s plans minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then go to bed … There is nothing sweeter in the world.

When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.

My happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end.

When I think of the man I hoped you were, I can’t help but feel like I met you five minutes too late.

There’s no such thing as too late in life.

I’ve always felt that a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.

She was not a mother and had no idea of Earth’s other freightage. Only of the moment of initiation.

From this moment on, I will not try to prove myself anymore, for I have already accepted my own premise: that existence exists and that I belong to this earth…

I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.