Quotes about Self-reliance

What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree, and to obey?

She caught herself thinking: She's functioning well in an emergency, I'll be all right with her—and realized that she was thinking of herself.

Why, child, such things are to be decided only by you and my son.

There are only individual minds and individual achievements—and a culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiated masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men.

I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need. "I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others.

Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority.

a new biological species, the hit-and-run businessmen, who did not stay in any line of business longer than the span of one deal, who had no payrolls to meet, no overhead to carry, no real estate to own, no equipment to build, whose

Thinking is something one doesn't borrow or pawn.

Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us." "But I don't think of you." Toohey

The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide—as, I think, he will.

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.

Have you always liked being Howard Roark?" Roark smiled. The smile was amused, astonished, involuntarily contemptuous.