“Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment's torture.”

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.