Atlas Shrugged John Galt Quotes

#1. Man's life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose . If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man - for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life.

Ayn Rand

#2. She had caught the sound of suffering in the faintest exaggeration of evenness in his voice.

Ayn Rand

#3. This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero.

Ayn Rand

#4. This country was not built... by men who sought handouts. John Galt speech, Atlas Shrugged, 1957

Alex Ayres

#5. Whenever a man denounces the mind, it is because his goal is of a nature the mind would not permit him to confess.

Ayn Rand

#6. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values.

Ayn Rand

#7. The anti-mind is the anti-life.

Ayn Rand

#8. It was a sudden, stunned state of quiet drunkenness, complete in itself, their hair mingled like the rays of two bodies in space that had achieved their meeting, she saw that he walked with his eyes closed, as if even sight would now be an intrusion.

Ayn Rand

#9. His face gave her nothing in answer: it had that look of respectful severity with which a man stands before the fact that the truth is the truth.

Ayn Rand

#10. It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.

Ayn Rand

#11. It was that ruthless tone, peculiarly his, which sounded implacable by being simple, devoid of any emotional value, save the quality of respect for facts.

Ayn Rand

#12. I'll warn you now that there is one word which is forbidden in this valley: the word 'give.

Ayn Rand

#13. Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.

Ayn Rand

#14. There is a morality of reason, a morality proper to man, and Man's Life is its standard of value.
All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil.

Ayn Rand

#15. Reason is your means of survival - so that for you, who are a human being, the question 'to be or not to be' is the question 'to think or not to think..'.

Ayn Rand

#16. To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes.

Ayn Rand

#17. No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.

Ayn Rand

#18. She sat beside him in the car, feeling no desire to speak, knowing that neither of them could conceal the meaning of their silence.

Ayn Rand

#19. She felt an odd, light-hearted indifference, as if she suddenly wanted nothing but the comfort of surrendering to helplessness.

Ayn Rand

#20. We will not deal with men on any terms but ours - and our terms are a moral code which holds that man is an end in himself and not the means to any end of others. We do not seek to force our code upon them. They are free to believe what they please.

Ayn Rand

#21. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.

Ayn Rand

#22. A process of reason is a process of constant choice in answer to the question: True or False? - Right or Wrong?

Ayn Rand

#23. Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not recognize such duty. Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider need a claim. Do not cry that you own us. You don't.

Ayn Rand

#24. Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it. A being who does not hold his own life as the motive and goal of his actions, is acting on the motive and standard of death.

Ayn Rand

#25. If any part of your uncertainty is a conflict between your heart and your mind - follow your mind.

Ayn Rand

#26. It was as if he were a single whole, grasped by her first glance at him, like some irreducible absolute, like an axiom not to be explained any further, as if she knew everything about him by direct perception, and what awaited her now was only the process of identifying her knowledge.

Ayn Rand

#27. John, the self-made man, self-made in every sense, out of nowhere, penniless, parentless, tie-less ... but I've always thought of him as if he had come into the world like Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, who sprang forth from Jupiter's head, fully grown and fully armed.

Ayn Rand

#28. Reality is that which exists; the unreal does not exist; the unreal is merely that negation of existence which is the content of a human consciousness when it attempts to abandon reason. Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.

Ayn Rand

#29. I have never felt guilty of my ability. I have never felt guilty of my mind. I have never felt guilty of being a man. I accepted no unearned guilt, and thus was free to earn and to know my own value.

Ayn Rand

#30. 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

#31. There is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires - if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical?

Ayn Rand

#32. Our first rule here ... is that one must always see for oneself.

Ayn Rand

#33. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies...It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.

Ayn Rand

#34. Logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification.

Ayn Rand

#35. You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty.

Ayn Rand