All AYN RAND Quotes about “Choices”

“Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.”
“Serenity comes from the ability to say â€œYesâ€ to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say â€œNoâ€ to the wrong choices made by others.”
“[S]tatism is a system of institutionalized violence and perpetual civil war. It leaves men no choice but to fight to seize political power -- to rob or be robbed, to kill or be killed. ... Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production.”
“When you have established that one alternative is good and the other is evil, there is no justification for the choice of a mixture. There is no justification ever for choosing any part of what you know to be evil.”
“In order to live, man must act; in order to act, he must make choices; in order to make choices, he must define a code of values; in order to define a code of values, he must know what he is and where he is â€“ i.e. he must know his own nature (including his means of knowledge) and the nature of the universe in which he acts â€“ i.e. he needs metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, which means: philosophy. He cannot escape from this need; his only alternative is whether the philosophy guiding him is to be chosen by his mind or by chance.”
“All life is a purposeful struggle, and your only choice is the choice of a goal.”
“One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living.”
“My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists - and in a single choice: to live.”
“No individual or private group or private organization has the legal power to initiate the use of physical force against other individuals or groups and to compel them to act against their own voluntary choice. Only a government holds that power. The nature of governmental action is: coercive action. The nature of political power is: the power to force obedience under threat of physical injury-the threat of property expropriation, imprisonment, or death.”
“So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. . . . When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him by force. It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only against the man who starts its use. No, I do not share his evil or sink to his concept of morality: I merely grant him his choice, destruction, the only destruction he had the right to choose: his own.”
“Reality confronts man with a great many musts, but all of them are conditional the formula of realistic necessity is You must, if and the if stands for man's choice”
“Man is a being with free will; therefore, each man is potentially good or evil, and it's up to him and only him (through his reasoning mind) to decide which he wants to be.”
“Morality pertains only to the sphere of man's free will - only to those actions which are open to his choice.”
“When personal judgment is inoperative (or forbidden), men's first concern is not how to choose, but how to justify their choice”
“One's own independent judgment is the means by which one must choose one's actions, but it is not a moral criterion nor a moral validation; only reference to a demonstrable principle can validate one's choices.”
“Since nature does not endow all men with equal beauty or equal intelligence, and the faculty of volition leads men to make different choices, the egalitarians propose to abolish the "unfairness" of nature and of volition, and to establish universal equality in fact - in defiance of facts. It is not equality before the law that they seek, but inequality: the establishment of an inverted social pyramid, with a new aristocracy on top - the aristocracy of non-value.”
“Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other.”
“Psychologically, the choice "to think or not" is the choice "to focus or not." Existentially, the choice "to focus or not" is the choice "to be conscious or not." Metaphysically, the choice "to be conscious or not" is the choice of life or death.”
“She was incapable of love for any object not of her own choice and she resented anyone's demand for it.”

More Ayn Rand quote about:

You may also like:

Adam Smith
Philosopher
Alan Greenspan
Economist
Friedrich August von Hayek
Economist
Friedrich Nietzsche
Philologist
Leonard Peikoff
Philosopher
Ludwig von Mises
Philosopher
Milton Friedman
Economist
Murray Rothbard
Economist
Nathaniel Branden
Psychotherapist
Paul Ryan
United States Representative
Rand Paul
United States Senator
Yaron Brook
Author