Ayn Rand Quotes About Character

• Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character.

  Ayn Rand

  Spiritual, Selfish, Character

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.28, Penguin

• Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.

  Ayn Rand

  Love, Life, Character

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.98, Penguin

• The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser's intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture's dominant trend is geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.

  Ayn Rand

  Character, Winning, Thug

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.53, Penguin

• Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character.

  Ayn Rand

  Business, Character, People

• When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.

  Ayn Rand

  Character, Thug, Men

  Ayn Rand (1990). “The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought”, p.46, Penguin

• We have only two sources of information about the character of the people around us: we judge them by what they do and by what they say (particularly the first).

  Ayn Rand

  Character, Two, People

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.89, Penguin

• 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

  Business, Character, Men

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.1447, Penguin

• Even in dialogue, your own style rules your selection. Do not give yourself a blank check of this kind: 'I'll merely reproduce what I think a character like so-and-so would say.' You have to reproduce it in the way your literary premises dictate.

  Ayn Rand

  Writing, Character, Thinking

• But what man does out of despair, is not necessarily a key to his character. I have always thought that the real key is in that which he seeks for his enjoyment.

  Ayn Rand

  Real, Character, Men

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.375, Hamilton Books

• That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.

  Ayn Rand

  Character, Thinking, Choices

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.192, Penguin

• I write - and read - for the sake of the story... My basic test for any story is: 'Would I want to meet these characters and observe these events in real life? Is this story an experience worth living through for its own sake? Is the pleasure of contemplating these characters an end itself?

  Ayn Rand

  Real, Writing, Character

  Ayn Rand (2005). “The Fountainhead”, p.10, Penguin

• An idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol.

  Ayn Rand

  Character, Mean, Simple

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.289, Penguin

• It is fairly easy to grasp abstract moral principles; it can be very difficult to apply them to a given situation, particularly when it involves the moral character of another person.

  Ayn Rand

  Character, Principles, Moral

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.319, Penguin

• Man's character is the product of his premises.

  Ayn Rand

  Character, Men, Premises

  Ayn Rand (2005). “The Fountainhead”, p.10, Penguin

• Humor is not an unconditional virtue; its moral character depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue; to laugh at the good, is a hideous vice. Too often, humor is used as the camouflage of moral cowardice.

  Ayn Rand

  Character, Laughing, Vices

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.221, Penguin

• Are my characters copies of people in real life? ... Don't ever believe the stories about authors putting people into novels. That idea is a kind of joke on both authors and readers. All the readers believe that authors do it. All the authors know that it can't be done.

  Ayn Rand

  Real, Believe, Character

  Ayn Rand (1997). “Letters of Ayn Rand”, p.249, Penguin

• It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money.... Let me give you a tip on men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the...bell of an approaching looter.

  Ayn Rand

  Running, Character, Men

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.1447, Penguin

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