“It does take an exceptional mind and a still more exceptional integrity to remain untouched by the brain-destroying influences of the world’s doctrines, the accumulated evil of centuries—to remain human, since the human is the rational.”

Russian-American writer and philosopher

Ayn Rand, born Alice O'Connor, was a Russian-American writer and philosopher. She is known for her fiction and for developing Objectivism, the philosophical system she named. Her work brought together storytelling and philosophy, and she became closely associated with a body of ideas that she presented as Objectivism. Her writing is known for combining fiction with arguments about reason, individualism, and the role of philosophy in life.