Best of Ayn Rand quotes

"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."

“Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.”

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

 “If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”  
  - Atlas Shrugged

 “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.”

“You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”

“Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.” 
- Atlas Shrugged

“A government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.” 

“I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals and I loathe humanity for its failure to live up to these possibilities.”

“She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.”

“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.”
-  Atlas Shrugged

“Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.” 
-  Atlas Shrugged

“There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.” 
-  Atlas Shrugged

“Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.” 
- The Virtue of selfishness

“Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.”
- The Fountainhead

“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.”
-  Atlas Shrugged

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

-  Atlas Shrugged

“Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind. ”

-  Atlas Shrugged

“A rational man never distorts or corrupts his own standards and judgment in order to appeal to the irrationality, stupidity, or dishonesty of others.”  
- Atlas Shrugged

“In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them.”  
- The Virtue of selfishness

“But there are people who'll try to hurt you through the good they see in you--knowing that it's the good, needing it and punishing you for it. Don't let it break you when you discover that.” 

-  Atlas Shrugged

 

hope..

The other day when I was taking my mom from hospital back to home, in this auto-rickshaw, mid noon, I had a really rough time with the auto driver. I had been already going though a rough patch in life - having been recently met with an accident and most of the family members ailing.I was dealing with the downs of life, waiting patiently for the bad time to pass on, but, when the auto rickshaw driver started blabbing complaints and demanding more money because we were living in a street and not on the main road, the limits to my patience burst and I ended up in this heated argument with him which left me feeling bitter about the infrastructure around us, the law-and-order and the kind of people that we have to deal with.

Days later, when me and hubby were headed for a place somewhere in Vijayanagar, Bangalore for

image source : LINK

some work, we ended up in this small street that was heading straight to the cattle barn, with no side streets and reversing the car looked like a nightmare because half of the population from the houses - children and old alike - was on the street itself (thanks to the Google map and some people who would confidently guide you even if they themselves have no idea what you are looking for). We were not sure what to do next. Gathering courage, we started reversing the vehicle at a very very small pace, doing our best not to hurt anyone in the process. Slowly, the residents started helping us out, they started managing their children and gathering other stuffs like the drying spices and water buckets that they had laid out on the road while going through their daily chore. They also started guiding us to help make the reversing process smoother. There was this one really great guy who looked like a cab driver residing there, who took extra efforts to help us out of the nightmarish ordeal in that street. The incidence, although draining and tiring, filled my heart with hope and happiness - on finding so much friendliness and supportive attitude in the people out there. So, the good things do still exist :)

When I started writing this post, I just felt like putting the two incidences together, maybe to remind myself that there are both sides to life, that there are things that are good here and there are things that are bad. I hope we slowly improve upon things that are bad, and the experience of our next generation would be better than what it has been so far for us...

Image source : LINK