Ayn Rand (1905-1982) grew up with the ambition to be a fiction writer. In 1925, she left Soviet Russia for the United States. After making it to Hollywood she worked various jobs before she finally became a screenwriter. In 1936 she published her first novel, We the Living, which told of her life in in the Soviet Union.

After being rejected twelve times, her novel, The Fountainhead, was published in 1943 and became a best seller. Her novels and non-fiction work have remained classics despite (or because of) the controversial views they espouse.  Atlas Shrugged, along with The Fountainhead, is a renowned work of fiction (her last). a philosophical novel that examines multitude of complex issues.

Major Works

• The Fountainhead
• Atlas Shrugged
• The Romantic Manifesto
• Anthem
• We the Living
• The Virtue of Selfishness

More Information

• Ayn Rand on Wikipedia
• The Ayn Rand Institute
• The Ayn Rand Society
• Explore Ayn Rand
• The Ayn Rand Archives Oral History Program

Visit

• Ayn Rand Institute’s Archives – Irvine, California
• Ayn Rand Walking Tour – New York, NY

Ayn Rand Quotes

“To know one’s own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: Rationality.”

“If a dedication page were to precede the total of my work, it would read: To the glory of Man.”

“To hold an unchanging youth is to reach at the end, the vision with which one started.”

“Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man’s nature.”

“To demand ‘sense’ is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense.” (Atlas Shrugged, 1957)