Ayn Rand

Wealth is the product of a man’s ability to think.

The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.

If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and … if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own I would refuse….I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being’s right to exist.

We change every minute, never the same. If there’s no room to express the changes there can’t be any truthfulness.

Sometimes our idea of luxuries are our client’s ideas of necessities. You might think having a helicopter pad in the back garden, 20 housekeepers and two tennis coaches is over the top. But for them it’s like you buying a sandwich.

When a thought is too weak to be expressed simply, simply drop it.

What a guy, what a fool am I, to think my breaking heart could kid the moon.

Clouds float in the same pattern only once.

Our life before moving to Washington was filled with simple joys. Saturdays at soccer games, Sundays at Grandma’s house. And a date night for Barack and me was either dinner or a movie, because as an exhausted mom, I couldn’t stay awake for both. He was still the guy who’d picked me up for our dates in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by through a hole in the passenger-side door.

We don’t see the things the way they are. We see things the way WE are.

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.

There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves.

An artist is always alone if he is an artist. What the artist needs is loneliness.

Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

It’s time to start living the life you’ve imagined.