Ayn Rand Quotes About Guilt

• Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy--a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind's fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer.

  Ayn Rand

  Happiness, Real, Escaping

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.212, Penguin

• 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 me to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Innocent Man, Law

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.334, Hamilton Books

• The worst guilt is to accept an undeserved guilt — and that is what you have been doing all your life.

  Ayn Rand

  Witty, Guilt, Accepting

  "Atlas Shrugged".

• We are on strike, we, the men of the mind. We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.

  Ayn Rand

  Work, Men, Self

  Ayn Rand (2005). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.954, Penguin

• People don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they'll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue - a highly intellectual virtue - out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and their guilt.

  Ayn Rand

  Knowledge, Blessing, Thinking

  "Atlas Shrugged". Book by Ayn Rand, Part Two: Either-Or, Chapter One: The Man who Belonged On Earth, p. 346, 1957.

• For centuries, the mystics of spirit had existed by running a protection racket - by making life on earth unbearable, then charging you for consolation and relief, by forbidding all the virtues that make existence possible, then riding on the shoulders of your guilt, by declaring production and joy to be sins, then collecting blackmail from the sinners.

  Ayn Rand

  Running, Joy, Religion

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.124, Penguin

• Hence the sterile, uninspiring futility of a great many theoretical discussions of ethics, and the resentment which many people feel towards such discussions: moral principles remain in their minds as floating abstractions, offering them a goal they cannot grasp and demanding that they reshape their souls in its image, thus leaving them with a burden of undefinable moral guilt.

  Ayn Rand

  Offering, People, Goal

• Guilt is a rope that wears thin.

  Ayn Rand

  Guilt, Rope, Guilt Feelings

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.684, Hamilton Books

• Their eyes were dark and hard and glowing, with no fear in them, no kindness and no guilt.

  Ayn Rand

  Kindness, Eye, Dark

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Anthem”, p.16, Xist Publishing

• Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence.

  Ayn Rand

  Guilt, Innocence, Grants

  Ayn Rand (2005). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.842, Penguin

• Guilt is altruism's stock in trade, and the inducing of guilt is its only means of self-perpetuati on.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Self, Guilt

• We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.

  Ayn Rand

  Guilt, Doctrine, Life Is

  Ayn Rand (2005). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.954, Penguin

• I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence.

  Ayn Rand

  Guilt, Facts, Accepting

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.368, Hamilton Books

• Mysticism requires the notion of the unknowable, which is revealed to some and withheld from others; this divides men into those who feel guilt and those who cash in on it.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Guilt, Cash

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.332, Penguin

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