Aren’t they all acting on a selfish motive—to be noticed, liked, admired?—by others. At the price of their own self-respect. In the realm of greatest importance—the realm of values, of judgment, of sp...
My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.
There are two things we must get rid of early in life: a feeling of personal superiority and an exaggerated reverence for the sexual act.
An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.
I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
Today we have discovered the word that could not be said. I
She tried to tear herself away from him. The effort broke against his arms that had not felt it. Her fists beat against his shoulders, against his face. He moved one had, took her two wrists, pinned t...
Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth - the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys hi...
Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity.
At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke the...
Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value -...
We knew not where we were going. We only knew that we must run, run to the end of the world, run to the end of our days.
I want you, Hank. I'm much more of an animal than you think. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you - and the only thing I'm ashamed of is that I did not know it. I did not know why, for two yea...
Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.
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.
Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burnt at the stake he'd taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived and he lifted dar...
The question of whether one alleges the Superiority or Inferiority of any given race is irrelevant; racism has only one psychological root: the racist's sense of his own Inferiority.
Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.