Ayn Rand Moral Quotations

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.

The cult of moral grayness is a revolt against moral values.

There can be no compromise on moral principles.

...only the pleasure which proceeds from a rational value judgement can be regarded as moral, pleasure, as such, is not a guide to action nor a standard of morality.

One must never fail to pronounce moral judgment.

Errors of knowledge are not breaches of morality; no proper moral code can demand infallibility or omniscience.

My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists - and in a single choice: to live.

A rational process is a moral process.

One of the most destructive anti-concepts in the history of moral philosophy is the term 'duty.

The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard.

Art is the indispensable medium for the communication of a moral ideal ...

A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality

The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word 'selfishness' is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual 'package-deal,' which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.

The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.

All the reasons which made the initiation of physical force evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.

It is fairly easy to grasp abstract moral principles; it can be very difficult to apply them to a given situation, particularly when it involves the moral character of another person..

If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man's only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.

The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral.