Philosophy Quote by Ayn Rand — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“Who is John Galt?”

“Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment - on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict ‘It is.”

“The source of man's rights is not divine law or a congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A ___ and man is man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product for his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational”

“A culture is made — or destroyed — by its articulate voices.”

“To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I.’ The meaning of the ‘I’ is an independent, self-sufficient entity that does not exist for the sake of any other person. A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite. The love of a parasite is worth nothing.”

“Faith in the possibilities of continued and rigorous inquiry does not limit access to truth to any channel or scheme of things. It does not first say that truth is universal and then add there is but one road to it.”

“Calvin:"It says here that 'religion is the opiate of the masses.'...what do you suppose that means?”

“I’ve always hated the “Who are you?" question. This is a philosophical inquiry. Answering that question is why we’re on earth. You can’t answer it in thirty seconds or in an elevator.”

“Reason may be employed to support faith as well as to destroy it.”

“Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones.”

“For Marx, the only thing that motivates humans is money. For Freud, it’s libido. And for Schopenhauer, it is the blind metaphysical will. All are horribly wrong. More than anything, man seeks meaning in his life. And in that meaning, he seeks superiority over others.”