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85+ (BEST) Quotes By Ayn Rand Inspiring Life Lessons

Here are the best quotes by Ayn Rand– Best thoughts for personal success, business ideas, life lessons, self-esteem, happiness, and love from Ayn Rand’s novels Atlas Shrugged, Fountainhead, and Anthem and much more.

Ms. Ayn Rand, a famous novelist and philosopher, is also a prolific writer of quotes. If you have not read any works by Ayn Rand, I strongly recommend that you do. This compilation of some of the quotes and lines by Ayn Rand will help you to see life in a different way.

She was a philosopher and her quotes are one of the best examples of how powerful philosophy can be. Here you will find 85+ Ayn Rand motivational quotes that will make your day and motivate you to live towards your dreams.

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Contents

Quotes by Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand was a great author and philosopher who had some great quotes. The list of her most important quotes ​are listed below. She has inspired many people in their personal lives and in working for a better future.

In this post, you will find the quotes by Ayn Rand that are inspiring & motivational. Let’s get started with her most famous quotes.

  • “Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.” –Ayn Rand
  • “But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself. ” –Ayn Rand
  • “Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.” –Ayn Rand
  • “Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.” –Ayn Rand
  • “It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.” –Ayn Rand
  • “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.” –Ayn Rand
  • “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.” –Ayn Rand
Quotes By Ayn Rand
  • “Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. ” –Ayn Rand
  • “In this world, either you’re virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both. ” –Ayn Rand
  • “Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned.” –Ayn Rand
  • “I think, therefore I’ll think.” –Ayn Rand

“I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals and I loathe humanity for its failure to live up to these possibilities.” –Ayn Rand

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  • “The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it.” –Ayn Rand
  • “Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.” –Ayn Rand
  • “Self respect is something that can’t be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man’s pretense at it. ” –Ayn Rand
  • “The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.” –Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Inspirational Quotes

Many quotes from Ayn Rand’s novels teach an entrepreneur to work hard at achieving his goals. Ayn Rand, the renowned philosopher, novelist, and founder of Objectivism believes that anyone can overcome the world with his own hands.

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  • “If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.” –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.” –Ayn Rand
  • “Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants.” –Ayn Rand
  • “Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.” –Ayn Rand
  • “The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.” –Ayn Rand
  • “Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.” –Ayn Rand
  • “A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” –Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Inspirational Quotes
  • “Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to? ” –Ayn Rand
  • “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.” –Ayn Rand

“Don’t fool yourself, my dear. You’re much worse than a bitch. You’re a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable.” –Ayn Rand

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  • “Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.” –Ayn Rand
  • “Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.” –Ayn Rand


  • “The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. ” –Ayn Rand
  • “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.” –Ayn Rand
  • “Do not let the hero in your soul parish, in lonely frustration, for the life you deserved but never have been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.” –Ayn Rand
  • “If one’s actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others.” –Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Quotes on Woman

Learn about the wisdom that is written about woman in Rand’s books, which is also reflected in her love letters.

However, we think these quotes will strike a chord with you, and remind you that women can overcome anything in the world . . . with the right kind of guidance.

  • “To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She’s earned it, it’s a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake – and that is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity and your invaluable self-esteem.”
  • “She knew that even pain can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the witness…” –Ayn Rand
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  • “Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.” –Ayn Rand
  • “I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach.” –Ayn Rand
  • “In this world, either you’re virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both. ” –Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Quotes on Woman
  • “If you tell a beautiful woman that she is beautiful, what have you given her? It’s no more than a fact and it has cost you nothing. But if you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty. To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She’s earned it, it’s a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake – and that is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity and your invaluable self-esteem.”


  • “She smiled. She knew she was dying. But it did not matter any longer. She had known something which no human words could ever tell and she knew it now. She had been awaiting it and she felt it, as if it had been, as if she had lived it. Life had been, if only because she had known it could be, and she felt it now as a hymn without sound, deep under the little whole that dripped red drops into the snow, deeper than that from which the red drops came. A moment or an eternity- did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist. She smiled, her last smile, to so much that had been possible.” –Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Quotes on Life

Do you need some life lessons quotes from Ayn Rand then you should read this section. This will help you to read get your need.

  • “The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.” –Ayn Rand
  • “Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.” –Ayn Rand
  • “Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong. ” –Ayn Rand
  • “Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).” –Ayn Rand
  • “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.” –Ayn Rand
  • “If one’s actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others.” –Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Quotes on Life
  • “He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another’s personality, marking vulnerable points.” –Ayn Rand
  • “Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you w ish, but it will not replace you as the driver. ” –Ayn Rand
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  • “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. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours. ” –Ayn Rand
  • “There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we’re not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge. ” –Ayn Rand
  • “Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions.” –Ayn Rand
  • “I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life. ” –Ayn Rand
  • “And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride.” –Ayn Rand


  • “It’s easy to run to others. It’s so hard to stand on one’s own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can’t fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It’s easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It’s simple to seek substitutes for competence–such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence. ” –Ayn Rand
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  • “When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit.” –Ayn Rand
  • “What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey? ” –Ayn Rand

Famous Quotes by Ayn Rand

Now here are some most famous quotes by Ayn Rand that will lead you to another world of her philosophy.

  • “Freedom: To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing. ” –Ayn Rand
  • “Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.” –Ayn Rand
  • “What is man? He’s just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur. ” –Ayn Rand
  • “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.” –Ayn Rand
  • “Love is the expression of one’s values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.” –Ayn Rand
  • “A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue.” –Ayn Rand
  • “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” –Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand Quotes on Life
  • “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.” –Ayn Rand
  • “To say “I love you” one must know first how to say the “I”.” –Ayn Rand
  • “You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgement and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been calle anti social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads.” –Ayn Rand
  • “It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.” –Ayn Rand
  • “Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.” –Ayn Rand


  • “He wanted her. He knew where to find her. He waited. It amused him to wait, because he knew that the waiting was unbearable to her. He knew that his absence bound her to him in a manner more complete and humiliating than his presence could enforce. He was giving her time to attempt an escape, in order to let her know her own helplessness when he chose to see her again.” –Ayn Rand
  • “I think, therefore I’ll think.” –Ayn Rand
  • “Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.” –Ayn Rand
  • “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 their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled.” –Ayn Rand
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Ayn Rand Quotes on Her Objectivism

Her objectivity regarding life is totally different, if you read these quotes below you will realize that.

  • “Why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world–to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want. ” –Ayn Rand
  • “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 their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled.” –Ayn Rand
  • “There’s no way to rule innocent men. 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. ” –Ayn Rand
  • “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, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked.The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on.There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all. ” –Ayn Rand
  • “To say “I love you” one must know first how to say the “I”.” –Ayn Rand
Famous Quotes by Ayn Rand
  • “Is it advisable to spread out all the conveniences of culture before people to whom a few steps up a stair to a library is a sufficient deterrent from reading?” –Ayn Rand
  • “Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons – a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.” –Ayn Rand
  • “To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul – would you understand why that’s much harder? ” –Ayn Rand
  • “The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.” –Ayn Rand


  • “The word We is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages. ” –Ayn Rand
  • “You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated” –Ayn Rand
  • “Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character.” –Ayn Rand
  • “It’s easy to run to others. It’s so hard to stand on one’s own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can’t fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It’s easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It’s simple to seek substitutes for competence–such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.”   –Ayn Rand

Final Words

Here’s a list of Ayn Rand Quotes on Life, which will hopefully provide you with the motivation and inspiration you need to keep pushing forward.

The quotes contain a mixture of excerpts from her novels as well as thoughts and opinions she gave in interviews, lectures, and in conversation.

The purpose of this article is to provide a collection of quotes from Ayn Rand, all dealing with various aspects of life for everyone: young and old, new and experienced.

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