The Virtue of Selfishness Quotes

“The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love - because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed value. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“The freedom of speech of private individuals includes the right to not agree, not to listen, and not to finance one's own antagonists.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“There can be no compromise on moral principles.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“In order to deal with reality successfully - to pursue and achieve the values which his life requires - man needs self-esteem; he needs to be confident of his efficacy and worth.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“Observe how many people evade, rationalize and drive their minds into a state of blind stupor, in dread of discovering that those they deal with- their "loved ones" or friends or business associates or political rulers- are not merely mistaken, but evil. Observe that this dread leads them to sanction, to help and to spread the very evil whose existence they fear to acknowledge.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof. When man rejects reason as his standard of judgement, only one alternative standard remains to him: his feelings. A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of feelings with knowledge”
― Nathaniel Branden, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“A Conformist is a man who declares, "It's true because others believe it" - but an Individualist is NOT a man who declares, "It's true because I believe it."
An Individual declares, "I believe it because I see in reason that it is true.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“Remember that rights are moral principles which define and protect a man's freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other men.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“Psychologically, the choice "to think or not" is the choice "to focus or not." Existentially, the choice "to focus or not" is the choice "to be conscious or not." Metaphysically, the choice "to be conscious or not" is the choice of life or death.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“There can be no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race - and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.

If some "pacifist" society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“The cult of moral grayness is a revolt against moral values.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“The precept: “Judge not, that ye be not judged” . . . is an abdication of moral responsibility: it is a moral blank check one gives to others in exchange for a moral blank check one expects for oneself.

There is no escape from the fact that men have to make choices; so long as men have to make choices, there is no escape from moral values; so long as moral values are at stake, no moral neutrality is possible. To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.

The moral principle to adopt in this issue, is: “Judge, and be prepared to be judged.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“The ' pleasure' of being drunk is obviously the pleasure of escaping from the responsibility of Consciousness.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“Self-esteem is not a value that, once achieved, is maintained automatically thereafter; like every other human value, including life itself, it can be maintained only by action. Self-esteem, the basic conviction that one is competent to live, can be maintained only so long as one is engaged in a process of growth, only so long as one is committed to the task of increasing one's efficacy. In living entities, nature does not permit stillness: when one ceases to grow, one proceeds to disintegrate--in the mental no less than in the physical.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“Morality is a code of black and white. When and if men attempt a compromise, it is obvious which side will necessarily lose and which will necessarily profit.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“Man's basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“An Individualist is a man who lives for his own sake and by his own mind; he neither sacrifices himself to others nor sacrifices others to himself; he deals with men as a trader - not as a looter; as a producer - not as a Attila.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“The "pleasure" of being drunk is obviously the pleasure of escaping from the responsibility of consciousness. And so are the kind of social gatherings, held for no other purpose than the expression of hysterical chaos, where the guests wander around in an alcoholic stupor, prattling noisily and senselessly, and enjoying the illusion of a universe where one is not burdened with purpose, logic, reality or awareness.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation , an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man.
There can be no such thing as " the right to enslave .”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.”
― Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“There is only one reality - the reality knowable to reason. And if man does not choose to perceive it, there is nothing else for him to perceive; if it is not of this world that he is conscious, then he is not conscious at all”
― Nathaniel Branden, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism