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To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: ReasonPurposeSelf-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledgePurpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieveSelf-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living.

Galts Speech,
For the New Intellectual, 128

By a feeling he has not learned to identify, but has derived from his first awareness of existence, from his discovery that he has to make choices, man knows that his desperate need of self-esteem is a matter of life or death. As a being of volitional consciousness, he knows that he must know his own value in order to maintain his own life. He knows that he has to be right ; to be wrong in action means danger to his life; to be wrong in person, to be evil , means to be unfit for existence.

Every act of mans life has to be willed; the mere act of obtaining or eating his food implies that the person he preserves is worthy of being preserved; every pleasure he seeks to enjoy implies that the person who seeks it is worthy of finding enjoyment. He has no choice about his need of self-esteem, his only choice is the standard by which to gauge it. And he makes his fatal error when he switches this gauge protecting his life into the service of his own destruction, when he chooses a standard contradicting existence and sets his self-esteem against reality.

Galts Speech,
For the New Intellectual, 176

No value is higher than self-esteem, but youve invested it in counterfeit securitiesand now your morality has caught you in a trap where you are forced to protect your self-esteem by fighting for the creed of self-destruction. The grim joke is on you: that need of self-esteem, which youre unable to explain or to define, belongs to my morality, not yours; its the objective token of my code, it is my proof within your own soul.

Galts Speech,
For the New Intellectual, 175

Self-esteem is reliance on ones power to think. It cannot be replaced by ones power to deceive. The self-confidence of a scientist and the self-confidence of a con man are not interchangeable states, and do not come from the same psychological universe. The success of a man who deals with reality augments his self-confidence. The success of a con man augments his panic.

The Age of Envy,
Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, 181

The man of authentic self-confidence is the man who relies on the judgment of his own mind. Such a man is not malleable; he may be mistaken, he may be fooled in a given instance, but he is inflexible in regard to the absolutism of reality, i.e., in seeking and demanding truth . . .

There is only one source of authentic self-confidence: reason.

The Age of Envy,
Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, 182

The attack on selfishness is an attack on mans self-esteem; to surrender one, is to surrender the other.

Introduction,
The Virtue of Selfishness, 10

Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.

Philosophy: Who Needs It,
Philosophy: Who Needs It, 10

To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem , is capable of lovebecause he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.

The Objectivist Ethics,
The Virtue of Selfishness, 32

Acknowledgments

Excerpts from The Ominous Parallels, by Leonard Peikoff. Copyright 1982 by Leonard Peikoff. Reprinted with permission of Stein and Day Publishers. Excerpts from The Romantic Manifesto, by Ayn Rand. Copyright 1971, by The Objectivist. Reprinted with permission of Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. Excerpts from Atlas Shrugged, copyright 1957 by Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead, copyright 1943 by Ayn Rand, and For the New Intellectual, copyright 1961 by Ayn Rand. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Ayn Rand. Excerpts from Philosophy: Who Needs It, by Ayn Rand. Copyright 1982 by Leonard Peikoff, Executor, Estate of Ayn Rand. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Ayn Rand. Excerpts from The Philosophy of Objectivism lecture series. Copyright 1976 by Leonard Peikoff. Reprinted by permission. Excerpts from Alvin Tofflers interview with Ayn Rand, which first appeared in Playboy magazine. Copyright 1964. Reprinted by permission of Alvin Toffler. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Used by arrangement with Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.