Ayn Rand Quotes About Rationality

• It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.

  Ayn Rand

  Sacrifice, Men, Offering

  Ayn Rand (2005). “The Fountainhead”, p.677, Penguin

• Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration.

  Ayn Rand

  Religion, Defense, Lines

  "The Romantic Manifesto" by Ayn Rand, (Ch. 3), 1969.

• Capitalism demands the best of every man - his rationality - and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him.

  Ayn Rand

  Ambition, Men, Liberty

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.21, Penguin

• Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it.

  Ayn Rand

  Philosophy, Facts, Recognition

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.103, Penguin

• The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.

  Ayn Rand

  Sacrifice, Men, Liberty

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.58, Penguin

• A rational mind does not work under compulsion; it does not subordinate its grasp of reality to anyone's orders, directives, or controls; it does not sacrifice its knowledge, its view of the truth, to anyone's opinions, threats, wishes, plans.

  Ayn Rand

  Truth, Knowledge, Sacrifice

  "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal".

• [T]he only real moral crime that one man can commit against another is the attempt to create, by his words or actions, an impression of the contradictory, the impossible, the irrational, and thus shake the concept of rationality in his victim.

  Ayn Rand

  Real, Men, Thinking

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.374, Hamilton Books

• There must be only three supreme values which govern a person's life: Reason, Purpose, and Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge--Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve--Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man's virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride.

  Ayn Rand

  Honesty, Integrity, Self Esteem

• The Middle Ages were an era of mysticism, ruled by blind faith and blind obedience to the dogma that faith is superior to reason. The Renaissance was specifically the rebirth of reason, the liberation of man's mind, the triumph of rationality over mysticism - a faltering, incomplete, but impassioned triumph that led to the birth of science, of individualism, of freedom.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, History, Mind

  Ayn Rand (1971). “The New Left: the Anti-Industrial Revolution”

• Men prosper or fail, survive or perish in proportion to the degree of their rationality.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Degrees, Failing

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.15, Penguin

• Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality-not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.

  Ayn Rand

  Acceptance, Men, Thinking

  Ayn Rand (2005). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.999, Penguin

• To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.

  Ayn Rand

  Desire, Cost, Virtue

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.424, Penguin

• Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice... Man has to be a man-by choice; he has to hold his life as a value-by choice; he has to learn to sustain it-by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Practice, Choices

  Ayn Rand (1984). “Philosophy: Who Needs It”, p.75, Penguin

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