Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Randwas a Russian-born American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism. Educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. She had a play produced on Broadway in 1935–1936. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful in America, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 February 1905
CitySaint Petersburg, Russia
CountryRussian Federation
Man holds these rights [life, liberty and property], not from the Collective nor for the Collective, but against the Collective - as a barrier which the Collective cannot cross... these rights are man's protection against all other men.
God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive.
Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started.
Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.
Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.
Rights are not a matter of numbers - and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.
She thought how strange it would be if she ever said 'Hello' to him. One did not greet oneself each morning.
The leaves streamed down, trembling in the sun. They were not green, only a few, scattered through the torrent, stood out in single drops of green so bright and pure that it hurt the eyes; the rest were not a color, but a light, the substance of fire on metal, living sparks without edges. And it looked as if the forest were a spread of light boiling slowly to produce this color, the green rising in small bubbles, the condensed essence of spring. The trees met, blending over the road and the spots of sun on the ground moved with the shifting of the branches, like a conscious caress.
She thought: at this moment, the glass stem between his fingers feels just like the one between mine. We have this much in common.
Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.
her face lay still on the air under his face...
but their eyes were as cold blue glass buttons.
If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others.
He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost fascinating.