Rand Quotes

“Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.”
― Ayn Rand

“So you think that money is the root of all evil? [...] Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“It was easier to be brave when someone needed your protection.”
― Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World

“Burn you, Nerim, that's a leg not a bloody side of beef!"
"As my lord says," Nerim murmured. "My lord's leg is not a side of beef. Thank you, my lord, for instructing me.”
― Robert Jordan, Lord of Chaos

“Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one’s consciousness can permit the faking of existence.”
― Ayn Rand, Journals of Ayn Rand

“If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? . . . Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“I’d better get going or Valek will be wondering where I am.”
“Yes, by all means go. I noticed you and Valek have become close. Tell him, for me, not to kill anybody, will you?” Sarcasm rendered Rand’s voice sharp.
I lost control and slammed the oven door shut. It echoed in the quiet kitchen. “At least Valek has the decency to inform me when he’s poisoning me,”
― Maria V. Snyder, Poison Study

“Death is light as a feather; duty, heavy as a mountain”
― Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World

“Run,” he whispered. “Run.”
“No, Rand,” I said, brushing the dirt from his face. “I’m tired of running.”
“Forgive me, please.” He clutched my hand as his eyes beseeched me through tears of pain.
“You’re forgiven.”
He sighed once, then stopped breathing. The shine in his brown eyes dulled. I pulled his hood over his head.”
― Maria V. Snyder, Poison Study

“You can't give up. You can't ever give up. If you give up you might as well be dead.”
― Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World

“Rand rubbed his hands over his face. His anger had dissipated. “I’m sorry, Yelena. I was backed into a corner and I couldn’t get out without hurting someone.”
― Maria V. Snyder, Poison Study

“They will pay. I am the Lord of the Morning”
― Robert Jordan, Lord of Chaos

“Rand, maybe that's the answer they give to everybody. Those snake people, I mean. Got to Rhuidean. Maybe we don't have to be here at all.' He did not believe it, but with that fog staring him in the face. ...

Rand turned his head to look at him, not speaking. Finally he said, 'They never mentioned Rhuidean to me, Mat.'

'Oh, burn me,' he muttered.”
― Robert Jordan, The Shadow Rising

“The whole idea of "leaners" and "lifters" is the central teaching of the right wing ideologue, Ayn Rand, who penned books like The Virtue of Selfishness. It’s a self-serving crock. Rand found out the hard way. After a lifetime proselytising on behalf of the "producers" and denouncing anyone needing government assistance as "parasites," when Rand became old and sick, she discovered that even a bestselling author could not afford health care in the neoliberal US. She availed herself of Medicare and ended her life on what she had despised – social security.
~ an edited extract from "The Life of I: the new culture of narcissism" ~Anne Manne~”
― Anne Manne

“It's not a question of who will allow me to do it, it's a question of who will stop me.”
― Ayn Rand

“I told you to make weapons, Taim. Show me just how deadly they are. Disperse the Shaido. Break them.”
― Robert Jordan, Lord of Chaos

“Couldn’t we camp down by the lakes?” Nynaeve asked, patting her face with her kerchief. “It must be cooler down by the water.”

“Light,” Mat said, “I’d just like to stick my head in one of them. I might never take it out.”

Just then something roiled the waters of the nearest lake, the dark water phosphorescing as a huge body rolled beneath the surface. Length on man-thick length sent ripples spreading, rolling on and on until at last a tail rose, waving a point like a wasp’s stinger for an instant in the twilight, at least five spans into the air. All along that length fat tentacles writhed like monstrous worms, as many as a centipede’s legs. It slid slowly beneath the surface and was gone, only the fading ripples to say it had ever been.

Rand closed his mouth and exchanged a look with Perrin. Perrin’s yellow eyes were as disbelieving as he knew his own must be. Nothing that big could live in a lake that size. Those couldn’t have been hands on those tentacles. They couldn’t have been.

“On second thought,” Mat said faintly, “I like it right here just fine.”
― Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World

“Mat gaped at them as they reined in before him and the others. "Is this...? Is this all of you?" they were little more than a hundred. Red saw and realized that somehow he had know that they would be.
"It takes more than bravery to bind a man to the Horn." Arthur Hawkwing`s voice was deep and carrying, a voice used to giving commands.
"Or a woman," Birgitte said sharply.
"Or a woman," Hawkwing agreed. "Only a few are bound to the Wheel, spun out again and again to work the will of the Wheel in the Pattern of the Ages. You could tell him, Lews Therin, could you but remember when you wore flesh.”
― Robert Jordan, The Great Hunt

“Love of our brothers? That's when we learned to hate our brothers for the first time in our lives. We began to hate them for every meal they swallowed, for every small pleasure they enjoyed, for one man's new shirt, for another's wife's hat, for an outing with their family for a paint job on their house--it was taken from us, it was paid for by our privations, our denials, our hunger.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Trust no-one, he thought bleakly. For an instant, he did not know if it was his thought or Lous-Therin's, but in the end he decided it did not matter. Everybody had their own goals, their own desires. Much the best to trust no-one completely except himself. Yet he wondered, with another man oozing through the back of his mind, how far he could trust himself.”
― Robert Jordan, The Fires of Heaven

“Aan de rand van zijn bewustzijn, waar het kind leeft dat hij was, spelen ze al die tijd verstoppertje. Sommige doden hebben een hardnekkig naleven.”
― Tommy Wieringa, Dit is mijn moeder