Ayn Rand

"If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others."

"I love doing it. Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable."

"You've never felt how small you were when looking at the ocean."

He laughed. "Never. Nor looking at the planets. Nor at mountain peaks. Nor at the Grand Canyon. Why should I? When I look at the ocean, I feel the greatness of man. I think of man's magnificent capacity that created this ship to conquer all that senseless space. When I look at mountain peaks, I think of tunnels and dynamite. When I look at the planets, I think of airplanes."

" [...] love is exception-making."

"The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see."

"I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself."

"There's so much nonsense about human inconstancy and the transience of all emotions. I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place. There are books I liked at the age of sixteen. I still like them."

"Self–sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed."

"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.

"Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world—to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want. "

"I don't work with collectives. I don't consult, I don't co-operate, I don't collaborate."

"It takes two to make a very great career: The man who is great, and the man—almost rarer—who is great enough to see greatness and say so."