A house can have integrity, just like a person,' said Roar, 'and just as seldom.

— Ayn Rand

All that which proceeds from man’s independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man’s dependence upon men is evil.

— Ayn Rand

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 - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself anything goes.

— Ayn Rand

Altruism holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only moral justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty. The political expression of altruism is collectivism or statism, which holds that man's life and work belong to the state - to society, to the group, the gang, the race, the nation - and that the state may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.

— Ayn Rand

A man’s spirit is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.

— Ayn Rand

America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.

— Ayn Rand

A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.

— Ayn Rand

An artist reveals his naked soul in his work - and so, gentle reader, do you when you respond to it.

— Ayn Rand

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.

— Ayn Rand

And, after all, you’ve got to live.”“Not that way,” said Roar.

— Ayn Rand