"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."
— Herbert Spencer

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
— Herbert Spencer

"Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments."
— Ludwig Von Mises

"Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping toward destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interest of everyone hangs on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us."
— Ludwig Von Mises

"They [intellectuals] coined most of the slogans that guided the butcheries of Bolshevism, Fascism, and Nazism. Intellectuals extolling the delights of murder, writers advocating censorship, philosophers judging the merits of thinkers and authors, not according to the value of their contributions but according to their achievements on battlefields, are the spiritual leaders of our age of perpetual strife."
— Ludwig Von Mises

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
— Dr. Seuss

"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth."
— Mark Twain

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
— Mark Twain

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough"
— Mae West

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
— Apple Computer Inc.

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
— Mark Twain

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
— Mark Twain

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."
— Oscar Wilde

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."
— Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
— Thomas A. Edison

"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
— Mark Twain

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
— Mark Twain

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone."
— Bill Cosby

"Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."
— Mark Twain

"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."
— Ayn Rand

"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."
— Aristotle

"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps 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 (Atlas Shrugged)

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."
— Ayn Rand

"Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person's sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves. No matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! - an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects their deepest vision of themselves, the person whose surrender permits them to experience - or to fake - a sense of self-esteem .. Love is our response to our highest values - and can be nothing else."
— Ayn Rand

"The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see."
— Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)

"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 (Atlas Shrugged)

"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 (Atlas Shrugged)

"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."
— Ayn Rand

"To say "I love you" one must know first how to say the "I"."
— Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)

"If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"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

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."
— Ayn Rand

"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 (Atlas Shrugged)

"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 (Atlas Shrugged)

"The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live."
— 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 (The Fountainhead)

"The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone."
— Ayn Rand (The Virtue of Selfishness)

"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 (Atlas Shrugged)

"But you see," said Roark quietly, "I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one."
— Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)

"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 (Atlas Shrugged)

"I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body."
— Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)

"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.

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?

But I am done with this creed of corruption.

I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame.

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.

This god, this one word:

"I."
— Ayn Rand (Anthem)

"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 (Atlas Shrugged)

"Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

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

"Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments."
— Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)

"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

"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 (The Fountainhead)

"Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions."
— Ayn Rand (Philosophy: Who Needs It?)