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Authors Writer Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand

American writer and philosopher · 1905–1982

Novelist and philosopher who developed Objectivism and wrote influential works including Atlas Shrugged.

Lifetime
Feb 2, 1905 – Mar 6, 1982 (age 77)
Primary field
Writer
Secondary fields
Philosopher
External Link
Ayn Rand Institute (ARI)
Tags
ObjectivismThe FountainheadAtlas ShruggedIndividualismLaissez-faire capitalism

Ayn Rand was a Russian-born American writer and philosopher, best known for the novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum in Saint Petersburg, she experienced the Russian Revolution before emigrating to the United States in 1926. She worked in Hollywood and later established herself as a novelist, gaining a wide readership for fiction centred on individual ambition, independence and conflicts between creators and social institutions.

Rand developed a philosophical system she called Objectivism, which emphasised reason, individual rights, rational self-interest and laissez-faire capitalism. She presented these ideas through fiction, essays, lectures and works including The Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Rand’s arguments have remained influential in some libertarian and conservative circles, particularly in the United States, while attracting sustained criticism from many academic philosophers and political thinkers. Her novels and philosophical writings continue to generate debate about individualism, morality and the role of government.

Quotations

“The thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”

Ayn Rand · Atlas Shrugged, 1957 · Primary source

“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”

Ayn Rand · Atlas Shrugged, 1957 · Primary source

“Don’t ever get angry at a man for stating the truth.”

Ayn Rand · Atlas Shrugged, 1957 · Primary source

“Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense. An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.

Ayn Rand · The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z, 1986 · Primary source

“I don’t intend to build in order to have clients. I intend to have clients in order to build.”

Ayn Rand · The Fountainhead, 1943 · Primary source

“Who will let you? That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”

Ayn Rand · The Fountainhead, 1943 · Primary source

“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.”

Ayn Rand · The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z, 1986 · Primary source

“Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.”

Ayn Rand · Atlas Shrugged, 1957 · Primary source

“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 · Atlas Shrugged, 1957 · Primary source

“One loses everything when one loses one’s sense of humor.”

Ayn Rand · The Fountainhead, 1943 · Primary source

“Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it?”

Ayn Rand · Atlas Shrugged, 1957 · Primary source

“The end does not justify the means. No one’s rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.”

Ayn Rand · The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z, 1986 · Primary source

“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 · Atlas Shrugged, 1957 · Primary source

“Have you felt it, too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you—except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them, nothing, not even a sound they can recognize.”

Ayn Rand · The Fountainhead, 1943 · Primary source

“Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.”

Ayn Rand · The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z, 1986 · Primary source

“Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people’s savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments.”

Ayn Rand · The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z, 1986 · Primary source

Selected works

Novel · 1943
The Fountainhead

An architect resists professional and social pressures while pursuing an uncompromising vision of individual creativity, independence, and artistic integrity.

Novel · 1957
Atlas Shrugged

Industrialists and innovators withdraw from a deteriorating society as the novel examines individualism, economic freedom, government power, and moral responsibility.

Reference work · 1986
The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z

An alphabetical reference to Ayn Rand’s Objectivist ideas, drawing together her statements on philosophy, economics, psychology, politics, and related subjects.

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