Ayn Rand Quotes About Virtue

• Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one’s consciousness can permit the faking of existence.

  Ayn Rand

  Honesty, Integrity, Men

  Ayn Rand (1997). “Journals of Ayn Rand”, E P Dutton

• 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

• There's nothing of any importance in life — except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value.

  Ayn Rand

  Money, People, Trying

  "Atlas Shrugged".

• When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, "Who is destroying the world?" You are.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Men, Evil

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.1448, Penguin

• Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth

  Ayn Rand

  Fighting, Pride, Men

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.817, Hamilton Books

• 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

• Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.

  Ayn Rand

  Funny, Inspiring, Money

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.316, Hamilton Books

• Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Insanity, Swim

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.129, Penguin

• Freedom comes from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue.

  Ayn Rand

  Ignorance, Emptiness, Virtue

• [Altruism] is a moral system which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the sole justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, value and virtue. This is the moral base of collectivism, of all dictatorships.

  Ayn Rand

  Sacrifice, Men, Self

• Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Independence, Principles

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.877, 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.

• The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice,' but integrity.

  Ayn Rand

  Integrity, Sacrifice, Love Is

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.43, Penguin

• Then no rightful cause was left, and the pain of anger was turning into the shameful pain of submission. He had no right to condemn anyone - he thought - to denounce anything, to fight and die joyously, claiming the sanctity of virtue. The broken promises, the unconfessed desires, the betrayal, the deceit, the lies, the fraud - he was guilty of them all. What form of corruption could he scorn? Degrees do not matter, he thought; one does not bargain about inches of evil.

  Ayn Rand

  Betrayal, Pain, Lying

• Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. ... To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others suffer in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Order, Suffering Of Others

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.64, Penguin

• 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

• Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. Virtue is the act by which one aims and/or keeps it.

  Ayn Rand

  Perseverance, Humility, Gains

• Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: 'Account Overdrawn.'

  Ayn Rand

  Political, Watches, Paper

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.316, Hamilton Books

• It's easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence--such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.

  Ayn Rand

  Running, Kindness, Eye

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.781, Penguin

• You'll come back, because yours is an error of knowledge, not a moral failure, not an act of surrender to evil, but only the last act of being victim to your own virtue. We'll wait for you and when you come back, you will have discovered that there need never be any conflict among your desires, nor so tragic a clash of values as the one you've borne so well.

  Ayn Rand

  Knowledge, Errors, Evil

• A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue.

  Ayn Rand

  Suicide, Men, Evil

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.1501, Penguin

• When you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately, that is to love people without any standard, to love them regardless of whether they have any value or virtue, you are asked to love nobody.

  Ayn Rand

  People, Virtue, Standards

• 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

• This is pity,” he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.

  Ayn Rand

  Feelings, World, Wonder

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.751, Penguin

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