Atlas Shrugged is a 1957 novel by Ayn Rand. Rand’s fourth and final novel, it was also her longest, and the one she considered to be her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing. Profoundly inspirational Atlas Shrugged quotes will challenge the way you think, and make your life worth living.
If you’re searching for inspirational quotes from books that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of profound Dune quotes, amazing Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy quotes and top Slaughterhouse Five quotes.
Famous Atlas Shrugged Quotes
To fear to face an issue is to believe that the worst is true. Ayn Rand
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps 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
If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn. Ayn Rand
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
No one’s happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy. Ayn Rand
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
Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. Ayn Rand
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
Don’t ever get angry at a man for stating the truth. Ayn Rand
A man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience a sense of self esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement. Ayn Rand
Your fear of death is not a love for life. 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
By the essence and nature of existence, contradictions cannot exist. Ayn Rand
Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. Ayn Rand
It was the joy of admiration and of one’s own ability, growing together. Ayn Rand
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
There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Ayn Rand
She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were This is not the world I expected. Ayn Rand
Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Ayn Rand
I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach. Ayn Rand
I refuse to apologize for my ability I refuse to apologize for my success I refuse to apologize for my money. Ayn Rand
What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can’t stand still. It must grow or perish. Ayn Rand
Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. Ayn Rand
Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Ayn Rand
Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to? Ayn Rand
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
The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means to protect him from physical violence. Ayn Rand
There is no such thing as a lousy job only lousy men who don’t care to do it. Ayn Rand
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
Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment’s torture. Ayn Rand
Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone. Ayn Rand
If one’s actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others. Ayn Rand
I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. Ayn Rand
Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. Ayn Rand
Man’s life must be a straight line of motion from goal to farther goal, each leading to the next and to a single growing sum. Ayn Rand
What is man? He’s just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur. Ayn Rand
The world you desire can be won. It exists it is real it is possible it’s yours. Ayn Rand
Love is our response to our highest values and can be nothing else. Ayn Rand
Power lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind. Ayn Rand
Only the man who extols the purity of a love devoid of desire, is capable of the depravity of a desire devoid of love. Ayn Rand
In this world, either you’re virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both. Ayn Rand
Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to? Ayn Rand
Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be left waiting for us in our graves or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth. Ayn Rand
I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. Ayn Rand
I take no pride in hopeless longing; I wouldn’t hold a stillborn aspiration. I’d want to have it, to make it, to live it. Ayn Rand
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. Ayn Rand
But you see, the measure of hell you’re able to endure is the measure of your love. Ayn Rand
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
He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another’s personality, marking vulnerable points. Ayn Rand
To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death. Ayn Rand
It’s not that I don’t suffer, it’s that I know the unimportance of suffering. I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one’s soul and as a permanent scar across one’s view of existence. Ayn Rand
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
Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants. Ayn Rand
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
It is not advisable to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener. Ayn Rand
Happiness is the state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. Ayn Rand
She sat listening to the music. It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean, and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance. Ayn Rand
Learning is a process of identification and integration. Your mind learns what it is through integration of the senses to learn as much as it can about its environment. Ayn Rand
Do not let the hero in your soul parish, in lonely frustration, for the life you deserved but never have been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours. 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. Ayn Rand
It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust but to know. Ayn Rand
Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions. Ayn Rand
A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue. Ayn Rand
They have no way of knowing what he feels when surrounded by inferiors hatred? no, not hatred, but boredom the terrible, hopeless, draining, paralyzing boredom. Ayn Rand
The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Ayn Rand
The moral justification of capitalism is man’s right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. Ayn Rand
I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life. Ayn Rand
No man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. Ayn Rand
He, too, stood looking at her for a moment and it seemed to her that it was not a look of greeting after an absence, but the look of someone who had thought of her every day of that year. She could not be certain, it was only an instant, so brief that just as she caught it, he was turning. Ayn Rand
But what can you do when you have to deal with people? Ayn Rand
There are no evil thoughts except one; the refusal to think. Ayn Rand
Metal costs much less to produce than you boys can imagine, I expect to skin the public to the tune of a profit of twenty five percent in the next few years. Ayn Rand
Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns or dollars. Take your choice there is no other. Ayn Rand
So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Ayn Rand
We are born into this world unarmed our mind is our only weapon. Ayn Rand
Those men who do not mind being practical enough to sell their brains for Money. Ayn Rand
There are no contradictions. If you find one, check your premises. Ayn Rand
To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Ayn Rand
When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self sacrifice You may know that your society is doomed. Ayn Rand
