Atlas Shrugged D'anconia Quotes & Sayings

There were no traces of human existence around them. Old ruts, overgrown with grass, made human presence seem more distant, adding the distance of years to the distance of miles. A haze of twilight remained over the ground, but in the breaks between the tree trunks there were leaves that hung in patches of shining green and seemed to light the forest. The leaves hung still. They walked, alone to move through a motionless world. She noticed suddenly that they had not said a word for a long time. — Ayn Rand

To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. — Ayn Rand

He held her, pressing the length of his body against hers with a tense, purposeful insistence, his hand moving over her breasts as if he were learning a proprietor's intimacy with her body, a shocking intimacy that needed no consent from her, no permission. She tried to pull herself away, but she only leaned back against his arms long enough to see his face and his smile, the smile that told her she had given him permission long ago. She thought that she must escape; instead, it was she who pulled his head down to find his mouth again. — Ayn Rand

Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself. — Ayn Rand

Francisco could do anything he undertook, he could do it better than anyone else, and he did it without effort. There was no boasting in his manner and consciousness, no thought of comparison. His attitude was not: "I can do it better than you," but simply: "I can do it." What he meant by doing was doing superlatively. — Ayn Rand

It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money - and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it. — Ayn Rand

The man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises - because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from that objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his own value and a momentary escape from the moral code that damns him. — Ayn Rand

Do you know what she did today?" He leaned confidentially across the table, pointing at the dishes in the sink. "She went to the market and left all the breakfast dishes there and said she'd do them later. I know what she wanted. She expected me to do them. Well, I'll fool her. I'll leave them just where they are. — Ayn Rand

The desperate violence of the way he held her, the hurting pressure of his mouth on hers, the exultant surrender of his body to the touch of hers, were not the form of a moment's pleasure - she knew that no physical hunger could bring a man to this - she knew that it was the statement she had never heard from him, the greatest confession of love a man could make. — Ayn Rand

An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced. — Ayn Rand

The informality of his posture, combined with the strict formality of his clothes, gave him an air of superlative elegance. His was the only face that had the carefree look and the brilliant smile proper to the enjoyment of a party; but his eyes seemed intentionally expressionless, holding no trace of gaiety, showing - like a warning signal - nothing but the activity of a heightened perceptiveness. — Ayn Rand

Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil? — Ayn Rand

Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Don't ignore your own desires ... Don't sacrifice them. Examine their cause. — Ayn Rand

Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade - with reason, not force, as their final arbiter - it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability - and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil? — Ayn Rand

Dangers, to Francisco, were merely opportunities for another brilliant performance; there were no battles he could lose, no enemies to beat him. — Ayn Rand

Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. — Ayn Rand

There was a time when men were afraid that somebody would reveal some secret of theirs that was unknown to their fellows. Nowadays, they're afraid that somebody will name what everybody knows. — Ayn Rand

What do you suppose those women are after but the same thing as the chaser - the desire to gain their own value from the number and fame of the men they conquer? Only it's one step phonier, because the value they seek is not even in the actual fact, but in the impression on and the envy of other women. — Ayn Rand

Both of them smiled derisively. But Francisco seemed to laugh at things because he saw something much greater. Jim laughed as if he wanted to let nothing remain great. — Ayn Rand

The man who despises himself tries to gain self-esteem from sexual adventures - which can't be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man's sense of his own value. — Ayn Rand

They say that it's hard for men to agree. You'd be surprised how easy it is - when both parties hold as their moral absolute that neither exists for the sake of the other and that reason is their only means of trade. — Ayn Rand

Sex is the physical expression of a tribute to personal values. — Ayn Rand

Accepting a man's hospitality is a token of good will, a declaration that you and your host stand on terms of a civilized relationship. — Ayn Rand

You can't have your cake and let your neighbour eat it too. — Ayn Rand

She was looking at his face; it was the face she had known ... There was no sign of tragedy, no bitterness, no tension - only the radiant mockery, matured and stressed, the look of dangerously unpredictable amusement, and the great, guiltless serenity of spirit. — Ayn Rand

His glance was like a plea, like the cry for help of a man who could never cry. — Ayn Rand

No matter what corruption he's taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity?-an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value. — Ayn Rand

He seemed casually at home, as if he felt that the place belonged to them, as they always felt wherever they went together. — Ayn Rand

She never knew where he was, in what city or on what continent, the day after she had seen him. He always came to her unexpectedly - and she liked it, because it made him a continuous presence in her life, like the ray of a hidden light that could hit her at any moment. — Ayn Rand

She saw both serenity and suffering in the calm of his face, an expression like a smile of pain, though he was not smiling ... He did not look like a man bearing torture now, but like a man who sees that which makes the torture worth bearing. — Ayn Rand

Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss - the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery - that you must offer them values, not wounds - that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. — Ayn Rand

Do I strike you as a man with a miserable inferiority complex?"
"Good God, no!"
"Only that kind of man spends his life running after women. — Ayn Rand

Isn't it wonderful that our bodies can give us so much pleasure? he said to her once, quite simply. They were happy and radiantly innocent. They were both incapable of the conception that joy is sin. — Ayn Rand

Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money? — Ayn Rand

It was not the mockery of malice - it was the laughter of a salute. — Ayn Rand

The capacity for unclouded enjoyment, she thought, does not belong to irresponsible fools; an inviolate peace of spirit is not the achievement of a drifter; to be able to laugh like that is the end result of the most profound, most solemn thinking. — Ayn Rand

Ask yourself what it is that a code of moral values does to a man's life, and why he can't exist without it, and what happens to him if he accepts the wrong standard, by which the evil is the good. — Ayn Rand

What glory can there be in the conquest of a mindless body? — Ayn Rand

Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. — Ayn Rand

Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives - and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy. — Ayn Rand

He said it without greeting, as if they had parted the day before. Because it took her a moment to regain the art of breathing, she realized for the first time how much that voice meant to her. — Ayn Rand

He said, looking down at her body, "Dagny, what a magnificent waste!"
She had to turn and escape. She felt herself blushing, for the first time in years: blushing because she knew suddenly that the sentence named what she had felt all evening. — Ayn Rand

Two things were impossible to him: to stand still or to move aimlessly. — Ayn Rand

If you came here dressed like this in order not to let me notice how lovely you are," he said, "you miscalculated. You're lovely. I wish I could tell you what a relief it is to see a face that's intelligent though a woman's. But you don't want to hear it. That's not what you came here for. — Ayn Rand

His features had the fine precision of sculpture. His hair was black and straight, swept back. The suntan of his skin intensified the startling color of his eyes: they were a pure, clear blue. His face was open, its rapid changes of expression reflecting whatever he felt, as if he had nothing to hide. The blue eyes were still and changeless, never giving a hint of what he thought. — Ayn Rand

When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. — Ayn Rand

They stopped and looked at each other. She knew, only when he did it, that she had known he would. He seized her, she felt her lips in his mouth, felt her arms grasping him in violent answer ... — Ayn Rand

All your life, you have heard yourself denounced, not for your faults, but for your greatest virtues. You have been hated, not for your mistakes, but for your achievements. You have been scorned for all those qualities of character which are your highest pride. You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgment and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been called anti-social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads. You have been called ruthless for the strength and self-discipline of your drive to your purpose. You have been called greedy for the magnificence of your power to create wealth. — Ayn Rand