John Galt Quotes

Quotes about:

• Government power is always abused by seizing and perverting the law. And with few exceptions, government always determines what is law.

  John Galt

  Government, Law, Abuse

  John Galt (1986). “Dreams Come Due: Government and Economics As If Freedom Mattered”

  50 Copy quote

• Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action...To remain alive, he must think.

  John Galt

  Men, Thinking, Survival

  35 Copy quote

• Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us.

  John Galt

  Evil

  48 Copy quote

• I want every fan of Rand to hear [Polaha] say the classic Galt phrase: “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.

  John Galt

  Men, Fans, Phrases

  73 Copy quote

• If there are degrees of evil, it is hard to say who is more contemptible: the brute who assumes the right to force the mind of others or the moral degenerate who grants to others the right to force his mind.

  John Galt

  Evil, Mind, Degrees

  34 Copy quote

• I do not enter discussions with neighbors who think they can forbid me to think. I do not place my moral sanction upon a murderer's wish to kill me. When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him-by force.

  John Galt

  Men, Thinking, Wish

  11 Copy quote

• All property and all forms of wealth are produced by man's mind and labor.

  John Galt

  Men, Mind, Wealth

  51 Copy quote

• Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice-and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man-by choice; he has to hold his life as a value-by choice; he has to learn to sustain it-by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues-by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

  John Galt

  Suicidal, Animal, Men

  51 Copy quote

• Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not.

  John Galt

  Men, Mind, Survival

  34 Copy quote

• I seek no values by means of evil, nor do I surrender my values to evil.

  John Galt

  Mean, Evil, Surrender

  35 Copy quote

• No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it.

  John Galt

  Mind, Matter, Modest

  29 Copy quote

• Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification-that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly.

  John Galt

  Character, Men, Justice

  34 Copy quote

• The self you have betrayed is your mind; self-esteem is reliance on one’s power to think. The ego you seek, that essential “you” which you cannot express or define, is not your emotions or inarticulate dreams, but your intellect, that judge of your supreme tribunal whom you’ve impeached in order to drift at the mercy of any stray shyster you describe as your “feeling.”

  John Galt

  Dream, Self Esteem, Thinking

  40 Copy quote

• Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason is his only means to gain it.

  John Galt

  Mean, Men, Gains

  9 Copy quote

• A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved.

  John Galt

  Men, Giving, Doe

  35 Copy quote

• It's not that I don't suffer, it's that I know the unimportance of suffering.

  John Galt

  Suffering, Knows

  24 Copy quote

• Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man's values, it has to be earned-that of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character-that your character, your actions, your desires, your emotions are the products of the premises held by your mind.

  John Galt

  Character, Pride, Men

  36 Copy quote

• There can be no causeless love or any sort of causeless emotion. An emotion is a response to a fact of reality, an estimate dictated by your standards.

  John Galt

  Reality, Facts, Emotion

  42 Copy quote

• If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but immoral when experienced by you?... Why is it immoral for your to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away?

  John Galt

  Giving, Desire, Moral

  30 Copy quote

• Discard the protective rags of that vice which you called a virtue: humility. Learn to value yourself, which means: to FIGHT for your happiness, and when you learn that pride is the sum of all virtues, you will learn to live like a man.

  John Galt

  Mean, Humility, Fighting

  23 Copy quote

• An attempt to gain a value by deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality.

  John Galt

  Reality, Mind, Gains

  22 Copy quote

• I will stop the motor of the world.

  John Galt

  World, Motor

  9 Copy quote

• The cloven-foot of self-interest was now and then to be seen aneath the robe of public principle.

  John Galt

  Self, Feet, Principles

  John Galt (1842). “The Provost: And Other Tales”, p.8, Edinburgh : W. Blackwood

  19 Copy quote

• As there can be no causeless wealth, so there can be no causeless love or any sort of causeless emotion.

  John Galt

  Emotion, Wealth

  29 Copy quote

• Whatever he was-that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love-he was not man.

  John Galt

  Men, Garden, Eden

  25 Copy quote

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