Except for Love, nothing you see will remain forever.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

I cannot do
All the good
That the world
Needs
But the world
Needs all the good
That I can do.

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.

Live only for yourself and you will never grow; live for the welfare of all those around you and you will grow to your full stature. 

The ultimate measure of our lives is not how much time we spend on the planet, but rather how much energy we invest in the time that we have.

It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man’s proper stature—and that the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning—and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or The Fountainhead that they will betray: it is their own souls.

No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it.

No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it.

I understand that safety and security are nice to have. But safety and security can become more important to an individual than being exceptional and doing fantastic things over the course of a life. When that happens often enough in a society, the society begins to die. It gives up its leadership role in the world. Accepting the importance and necessity of competition keeps.

Every important historical moment is marked by these sorts of shifts to new models of living, which expand in velocity and complexity well past what the current ways of thinking can handle. Our moment is no exception. And usually the source of the greatest historical disasters is that so few people at the time either recognize or understand the shift. Artists, with their tuned instincts for the new, often do. This is, at least partly, why their hearts sometimes seem to break as history collides with their lives.

In the nineteenth century the biggest threat to humanity was pneumonia,” he continued. “In the twentieth century it was cancer. The illness that will mark our era, and particularly the start of the twenty-first century, is insanity. Or, we can say, spiritual disease.” He paused. “This next century is going to be especially turbulent. It has already begun. And when I say ‘insanity’ and ‘spiritual disease,’ I don’t only mean inside the minds of individuals. Politics, military, economics, education, culture, and medicine—all these will be affected.

If you want to change the world… be your very best in the darkest moments.