Atlas Shrugged

by Ayn Rand (1957)

• Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us.

• 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.

• It is not advisable, James, to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener.

• Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it.

• The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.

• The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.

• There is no necessity for pain--why, then, is the worst pain reserved for those who will not accept its necessity?--we who hold the love and the secret of joy, to what punishment have we been sentenced for it, and by whom?