Quotes about Independence
What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are the egotists. You don't think through another's brain and you don't work through another's hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life.
— Ayn Rand
We wish to be damned with you, rather than blessed with all our brothers. Do
— Ayn Rand
Most people feel that they rise in their own eyes, if others want them. I feel that others live up to me, if they want me. And that is the way you feel, too, Hank, about yourself—whether you admit it or not.
— Ayn Rand
When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life.
— Ayn Rand
But I don't think of you.
— Ayn Rand
But I don't think of you.
— Ayn Rand
I could die for you. But I couldn't and wouldn't live for you.
— Ayn Rand
I do not care to be admired by anyone's heart—only by someone's head.
— Ayn Rand
They kept their secret from the knowledge of others, not as a shameful guilt, but as a thing that was immaculately theirs, beyond anyone's right of debate or appraisal.
— Ayn Rand
Self-sacrifice, we drool, is a virtue. Is sacrifice a virtue? Can a man sacrifice his integrity? His honor? His freedom? His ideal? His convictions? The honesty of his feeling? The independence of his thoughts? But these are a man's supreme possessions. Anything he gives up for them is not a sacrifice but an easy bargain.
— Ayn Rand
When Helen's father compliments Annie on the fact that she has taught Helen the rudiments of discipline, Annie, discouraged, answers: ". . . to do nothing but obey is—no gift, obedience without understanding is a—blindness, too.
— Ayn Rand
What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree, and to obey?
— Ayn Rand