Ideal Quotes

“there’s something in me that knows of a life I’ve never lived, the kind of a life no one has ever lived, but should.” “You know it? Why don’t you live it?”
― Ayn Rand, Ideal

“do you really think you’re so much better than everybody else?’ And what do you suppose she answered? ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do. I wish I didn’t have to.’ But actually!”
― Ayn Rand, Ideal

“Have you ever been in a temple and seen men kneeling silently, reverently, their souls raised to the greatest height they can reach? To the height where they know they are clean, and clear, and perfect? When their spirit is the end and the reason of all things? Then have you wondered why that has to exist only in a temple? Why men can’t carry it also into their lives? Why, if they can know the height, they can still want to live less than the highest? That’s what we want to live, you and I.”
― Ayn Rand, Ideal

“Have you ever been in a temple and seen men kneeling silently, reverently, their souls raised to the greatest height they can reach? To the height where they know they are clean, and clear, and perfect? When their spirit is the end and the reason of all things? Then have you wondered why that has to exist only in a temple? Why men can’t carry it also into their lives? Why, if they can know the height, they can still want to live less than the highest? That’s what we want to live, you and I. And if we can dream, we must also see our dreams in life. If not—of what account are dreams?”
― Ayn Rand, Ideal

“Dwight Langley, the painter, is the pure exponent of the evil the play is attacking; he is, in effect, the spokesman for Platonism, who explicitly preaches that beauty is unreachable in this world and perfection unattainable. Since he insists that ideals are impossible on earth, he cannot, logically enough, believe in the reality of any ideal, even when it actually confronts him. Thus, although he knows every facet of Kay Gonda’s face, he (alone among the characters) does not recognize her when she appears in his life. This philosophically induced blindness, which motivates his betrayal of her, is a particularly brilliant concretization of the play’s theme, and makes a dramatic Act I curtain.”
― Ayn Rand, Ideal

“The theme is the evil of divorcing ideals from life.”
― Ayn Rand, Ideal

“He asked simply, as if the matter of her presence were not unusual at all: “Did you have a hard time climbing those stairs?” She answered, “A little. All climbing is hard. But it’s usually worth it.”
― Ayn Rand, Ideal

“From the screen, a huge white face had looked at him, a face with a mouth one wished one could wish to kiss, and eyes that made one wonder—a wonder which was pain—just what it was they were seeing. He felt as if there was something—deep in his brain, behind everything he thought and everything he was—which he did not know, but she knew, and he wished he did, and wondered whether he could ever know it, and should he, if he could, and why he wished”
― Ayn Rand, Ideal

“He felt as if there was something—deep in his brain, behind everything he thought and everything he was—which he did not know, but she knew, and he wished he did, and wondered whether he could ever know it, and should he, if he could, and why he wished it.”
― Ayn Rand, Ideal

“The issue now is men’s lack of integrity, their failure to act according to the ideals they espouse.”
― Ayn Rand, Ideal

“acquaintance of Miss Rand’s, a conventional middle-aged woman, told her once that she worshiped a certain famous actress and would give her life to meet her. Miss Rand was dubious about the authenticity of the woman’s emotion, and this suggested a dramatic idea: a story in which a famous actress, so beautiful that she comes to represent to men the embodiment of their deepest ideals, actually enters the lives of her admirers. She comes in a context suggesting that she is in grave danger. Until this point, her worshipers have professed their reverence for her—in words, which cost them nothing. Now, however, she is no longer a distant dream, but a reality demanding action on their part, or betrayal.”
― Ayn Rand, Ideal