Ayn Rand

Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven, but not those who lack the courage of their own greatness.

To say ‘I love you’ one must know first how to say the ‘I.’

You must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences.

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never 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.

[Roark to Keating:] 'If you want my advice, Peter,' he said at last, 'you've made a mistake already. By asking me. By asking anyone. Never ask people. Not about your work. Don't you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?'

Peter Keating: 'Do you always have to have a purpose? Do you always have to be so damn serious? Can't you ever do things without reason, just like everybody else? You're so serious, so old. Everything's important with you. Everything's great, significant in some way, every minute, even when you keep still. Can't you ever be comfortable--and unimportant?' Howard Roark: 'No.'

About Mike the construction worker, friend of Roark: 'He worshipped expertness of any kind. He loved his work passionately and had no tolerance for anything save for other single-track devotions. He was a master in his own filed and felt no sympathy except for mastery. His view of the world was simple: there were the able and there were the incompetent; he was not concerned with the latter.'

She knew she could not have reached this white serenity except as the sum of all the colors, of all the violence she had known.

Roark: 'I don't make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse to measure myself as part of anything. I'm an utter egotist.'

Why do they always teach us that it is 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 would step in the way of a bullet if it were aimed at my husband. It is not self-sacrifice to die protecting that which you value: If the value is great enough, you do not care to exist without it.

You were not born to be a second-hander. Howard Roark to Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead

Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven, but not those who lack the courage of their own greatness.

Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers — show me yours — show me that it is possible — show me your achievement — and the knowledge will give me courage for mine. Mallory (the young artist) to Roark in 'The Fountainhead' Mallory (the young artist) to Roark in 'The Fountainhead'

It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man's proper stature—and the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning—and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or The Fountainhead that they will betray: it is their own souls.

The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who will seek them.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.

You know what you are actually in love with? Integrity. The impossible. The clean, consistent, reasonable, self-faithful, the all-of-one-style, like a work of art.

You must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences.

To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I'.

Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven, but not those who lack the courage of their own greatness.

You must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences.

You know what you are actually in love with? Integrity. The impossible. The clean, consistent, reasonable, self-faithful, the all-of-one-style, like a work of art.

The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who will seek them.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.