top of page
.png){kind=small}
"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... They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Psychology quotes
"A poor but confident man is as hard to find as a rich but shy man."
"We are not as important to most people as we are to ourselves. As a matter of fact, we are-to most people-not important at all."
"Instead of breaking or cherry-picking the rules, many just follow the inner rules, which have been instilled during their lifetime and have subtly permeated their thinking. They value rules, as it offers the ravishment of a securing, ceremonial rhythm in life and it prevents them from breaking free from their cocoon, all the more because freedom can be so scaring and exhausting. ['When forgetting the rules of the game']"
"It is a great mystery to me how the problems of others seem like simple arithmetic while my own appear as complicated as a calculus equation."
"Even if we have bad feelings about our past and it causes a sense of alienation, it belongs to our history. Its benchmarks are stored in the granary of our mind and crucial evaluations for the future cannot be made without consulting the archive of our memory. ['Not without the past']"
"How then did it work out, this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it was liking one felt, or disliking?"
"I feel like when I give trust that isn't earned, I receive hurt that isn't deserved."
"Boredom is a symptom of a conditioned and closed mind. If you are bored, you're doing yourself a tremendous disservice. Open your mind, break-free from your conditioned routine, and reignite the flames of excitement and discovery."
"Blame is the creed of the disempowered."
"Some people feed your ego, but starve your soul."
Explore more quotes by Ayn Rand
"It was as if a volcano were cracking open, yet the people at the foot of the mountain ignored the sudden fissures, the black fumes, the boiling trickles, and went on believing that their only danger was to acknowledge the reality of these signs."
"Well, whose opinion did you take? "I don't ask for opinions." "What do you go by?"Judgment. "Well, whose judgment did you take? "Mine. "But whom did you consult about it?". "Nobody."
"Every form of happiness if one, every desire is driven by the same motor-by our love for a single value, for the highest potentiality of our own existence-and every achievement is an expression of it."
"It was his self-esteem she had sought to destroy, knowing that a man who surrenders his value is at the mercy of anyone's will; it was his moral purity she had struggled to breach, it was his confident rectitude she had wanted to shatter by means of the poison of guilt-as if, were he to collapse, his depravity would give her a right to hers."
"It's easier to donate a few thousands 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."
"There is no difference between the principles, policies and practical results of socialism-and those of any historical or prehistorical tyranny. Socialism is merely democratic absolute monarchy-that is, a system of absolutism without a fixed head, open to seizure of power by all corners, by any ruthless climber, opportunist, adventurer, demagogue or thug."
"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."
"He did not know that he was expected to attempt to buy his way into society and that they anticipated the pleasure of rejecting him. He had no time to notice their disappointment."
"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."
bottom of page