Ayn Rand was a novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. Born in Russia, she moved to America at the age of 26. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful in America, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead.
In 1957, Rand published her best-known work, the novel Atlas Shrugged. In it, Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge, and rejected faith and religion. Afterward, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own magazines and releasing several collections of essays until her death in 1982.
While many disputed her philosophies and she was rejected and ignored by academia, her books live on today as a testament to a woman who held fast to her ideals. So go forth my women — take back the day and always remember “don’t take shit.”
“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”
“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.”
“Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.”
“The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.”
“I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.”
“Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.”
“You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”
“I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life.”
