Atlas Shrugged Happiness Quotes & Sayings

Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values. A morality that dares to tell you to find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness - to value the failure of your values - is an insolent negation of morality. — Ayn Rand

Man's life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless brute, of a looting thug or a mooching mystic, but the life of a thinking being - not life by means of force or fraud, but life by means of achievement - not survival at any price, since there's only one price that pays for man's survival: reason. — Ayn Rand

There is a morality of reason, a morality proper to man, and Man's Life is its standard of value.
All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil. — Ayn Rand

This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero. — Ayn Rand

Reality is that which exists; the unreal does not exist; the unreal is merely that negation of existence which is the content of a human consciousness when it attempts to abandon reason. Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth. — Ayn Rand

You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed happiness to duty. — Ayn Rand

Logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. — Ayn Rand

A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course of behavior. He needs a code of values to guide his actions. 'Value' is that which one acts to gain and keep, 'virtue' is the action by which one gains and keeps it. 'Value' presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? 'Value' presupposes a standard, a purpose and the necessity of action in the face of an alternative. Where there are no alternatives, no values are possible. — Ayn Rand

Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies...It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil. — Ayn Rand

She had always been ... the motive power of her own happiness. — Ayn Rand

A process of reason is a process of constant choice in answer to the question: True or False? - Right or Wrong? — Ayn Rand

Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification. — Ayn Rand

Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it. A being who does not hold his own life as the motive and goal of his actions, is acting on the motive and standard of death. — Ayn Rand

Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders' attempt to evade the fact that A is A. All the secret evil you dread to face within you and all the pain you have ever endured, came from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A. — Ayn Rand

Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say 'It is,' you are refusing to say 'I am.' By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: 'Who am I to know?'- he is declaring: 'Who am I to live? — Ayn Rand

Sweep aside those hatred-eaten mystics, who pose as friends of humanity and preach that the highest virtue man can practice is to hold his own life as of no value. Do they tell you that the purpose of morality is to curb man's instinct of self-preservation? It is for the purpose of self-preservation that man needs a code of morality. The only man who desires to be moral is the man who desires to live. — Ayn Rand

Reason is your means of survival - so that for you, who are a human being, the question 'to be or not to be' is the question 'to think or not to think..'. — Ayn Rand

To think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call 'human nature,' the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. — Ayn Rand

To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death. — Ayn Rand

I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life. — Ayn Rand

The anti-mind is the anti-life. — Ayn Rand

No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy. — Ayn Rand

The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments. — Ayn Rand

To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. — Ayn Rand

Man's life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose . If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man - for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life. — Ayn Rand

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice - and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be 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