One can even say that we require at all times a certain quantity of care or sorrow or want, as a ship requires ballast, in order to keep on a straight course.

Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.

The black unicorn was mistaken for a shadow or symbol and taken through a cold country where mist painted mockeries of my fury.

Sometimes despair sweeps across my consciousness like luna winds across a barren moonscape. Ironshod horses rage back and forth over every nerve.

Saints, it has been said, are the sinners who go on trying. So free men and women are the oppressed who go on trying and who in the process make themselves fit to bear the responsibilities and uphold the disciplines which will maintain a free society.

John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains—and he withdrew his fire—until the day when men withdraw their vultures.

When life's great storms come, the weak sink, the cowardly jump ship, the strong drop an anchor, the mighty adjust their sails, and the great sail on to their destiny.

Stay Positive It's easy to be positive when everything in life is going great. The hard part is staying positive when you get knocked down and kicked around. The fact is, no one goes through life untested. If you study history, sports, and business, you will find that every great leader and team had to overcome adversity and challenges to define themselves and their success

Failure provides you with a great opportunity to decide how much you really want something. Will you give up? Or will you dig deeper, commit more, work harder, learn, and get better? If you know that this is what you truly want, you will be willing to pay the price that success requires. You will be willing to fail again and again in order to succeed.

We must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we conjure up to avoid the unavoidable.

I assume everything I do in life is gonna be a failure, and then if it turns up roses, then I'm psyched.

It is difficulties that show what men are.