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Journals of Ayn Rand
Rarely has a writer and thinker of the stature of Ayn Rand afforded us access to her most intimate thoughts and feelings. From Journals of Ayn Rand, we gain an invaluable new understanding and appreciation of the woman, the artist, and the philosopher, and of the enduring legacy she has left us.Rand comes vibrantly to life as an untried screenwriter in Hollywood, creating stories that reflect her youthful vision of the world. We see her painful memories of communist Russia and her struggles to convey them in We the Living. Most fascinating is the intricate, step-by-step process through which she created the plots and characters of her two masterworks, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and the years of painstaking research that imbued the novels with their powerful authenticity. Complete with reflections on her legendary screenplay concerning the making of the atomic bomb and tantalizing descriptions of projects cut short by her death, Journals of Ayn Rand illuminates the mind and heart of an extraordinary woman as no biography or memoir ever could. On these vivid pages, Ayn Rand lives.
752 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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929 people want to read
About the author
Ayn Rand
587 books10.4k followersPolemical novels, such as
The Fountainhead
(1943), of primarily known Russian-American writer Ayn Rand, originally Alisa Rosenbaum, espouse the doctrines of objectivism and political libertarianism.
Fiction of this better author and philosopher developed a system that she named. Educated, she moved to the United States in 1926. After two early initially duds and two Broadway plays, Rand achieved fame. In 1957, she published Atlas Shrugged , her best-selling work.
Rand advocated reason and rejected faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism as opposed to altruism. She condemned the immoral initiation of force and supported laissez-faire capitalism, which she defined as the system, based on recognizing individual rights, including private property. Often associated with the modern movement in the United States, Rand opposed and viewed anarchism. In art, she promoted romantic realism. She sharply criticized most philosophers and their traditions with few exceptions.
Books of Rand sold more than 37 million copies. From literary critics, her fiction received mixed reviews with more negative reviews for her later work. Afterward, she turned to nonfiction to promote her philosophy, published her own periodicals, and released several collections of essays until her death in 1982.
After her death, her ideas interested academics, but philosophers generally ignored or rejected her and argued that her approach and work lack methodological rigor. She influenced some right conservatives. The movement circulates her ideas to the public and in academic settings.
Fiction of this better author and philosopher developed a system that she named. Educated, she moved to the United States in 1926. After two early initially duds and two Broadway plays, Rand achieved fame. In 1957, she published Atlas Shrugged , her best-selling work.
Rand advocated reason and rejected faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism as opposed to altruism. She condemned the immoral initiation of force and supported laissez-faire capitalism, which she defined as the system, based on recognizing individual rights, including private property. Often associated with the modern movement in the United States, Rand opposed and viewed anarchism. In art, she promoted romantic realism. She sharply criticized most philosophers and their traditions with few exceptions.
Books of Rand sold more than 37 million copies. From literary critics, her fiction received mixed reviews with more negative reviews for her later work. Afterward, she turned to nonfiction to promote her philosophy, published her own periodicals, and released several collections of essays until her death in 1982.
After her death, her ideas interested academics, but philosophers generally ignored or rejected her and argued that her approach and work lack methodological rigor. She influenced some right conservatives. The movement circulates her ideas to the public and in academic settings.
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June 19, 2019
It is a peculiar thing to read the journals of any person, journals that were never meant for publishing. The Journals of Ayn Rand may be even more interesting than most because we get a deeper insight into the development of her philosophy and her fiction writing. There are a few almost complete text here too that I was glad to finally read. I have this feeling that there are things omitted here that would have been of value - for instance, her notes on the break with Branden - but maybe those are not parts of her journals. I'm fascinated by this unfinished Rand because it gives us insight into the workings of a very fine mind. It is an achievement to get through, but the mix of fiction and then nonfiction gives the reader to change the pacing and the strain on the mind while reading.
May 29, 2024
A COLLECTION OF AYN RAND’S WRITINGS “TO HERSELF”: ABOUT HER BOOKS AND PHILOSOPHY
Leonard Peikoff’s Foreword to this 1997 states, “Ayn Rand’s ‘Journals’---my name for her notes to herself through the decades----is the bulk of her still unpublished work, arranged chronologically. What remains to be published are two lecture courses on writing, presently being edited, and her old film scripts. The Journals contains most of AR’s notes for her three main novels… and some notes from her final decades… Aside from occasional pieces… the AR material in this book was written for herself, for her own clarity… nor did AR intend to publish it. Obviously, therefore, nothing in the book may be taken as definitive of her ideas… Despite its unedited character, however, the Journals is a treat to read, because it is the raw evidence of AR’s continuous growth … both as a philosopher and as an artist… in regard both to depth and to truth.”
In an early entry, Rand wrote, “Achievement is the aim of life. Life is achievement. The sense of achievement---breaking through obstacles… Achievement---give yourself an aim, something you WANT to do, then go after it, breaking through everything, with nothing in mind but you aim, all will, all concentration---and GET IT.” (Pg. 8)
In an early philosophic journal she began at age 29, she wrote, “I believe… that the worst curse on mankind is the ability to consider ideals as something quite abstract and detached from everyday life… I hold religion mainly responsible for this. I want to prove that religion breaks a character before it’s formed, in childhood, by teaching a child lies before he knows what a lie is, by breaking him of the habit of thinking before he has begun to think, by making him a hypocrite before he knows any other possible attitude toward life… Faith is the worst curse of mankind; it is the exact antithesis an enemy of thought… I want to be known as the greatest champion of reason and the greatest enemy of religion.” (Pg. 66-68)
In 1943, she wrote, “Altruism is spiritual cannibalism. If it is so wrong to eat another man’s body---why is it right to feed upon his soul for one’s survival? The man who wishes to live for others is merely confirming his inferiority. The infallible test of a man’s value is the degree of his indignation against the idea of compulsion and against the idea of being like others, of being unoriginal…Man is NOT his brother’s keeper… The altruist’s inevitable concern with the inferior---its reasons and results.” (Pg. 245)
In 1945, she wrote, “Not on altruism: in private and voluntary instances of help to another person (and this is only KINDNESS, not ALTRUISM) it works well ONLY when the recipient of help is a worthwhile person… who is temporarily in need, purely through accident, not through his own nature. Such a person eventually gets back on his own feet and feels benevolence (or gratitude) toward the one who helped him. But when the recipient is essentially a ‘passive’ person, chronically in need through his own nature, the help of another gets him deeper into parasitism and has vicious results: he hates the benefactor. Therefore, here’s the paradox about ‘helping another’: one can only help those who don’t actually need it.” (Pg. 270-271)
She states, “Regarding the golden rule:… This is used in support of altruism. In that way, it would imply that you must give out to charity because you want to be an object of charity yourself. Or---you must sacrifice yourself to others because you want them to sacrifice themselves to you. Actually, the golden rule can work ONLY in application to MY morality: you do not sacrifice yourself to others and you do not wish them to sacrifice themselves to you…. You DO NOT WISH to live as an object of charity---and you do not hand charity out to others.” (Pg. 277)
In 1946, she argues, “There is no anonymous achievement. There is no collective creation. No step was taken anywhere… by a group of men working in unison under the guidance of a majority vote. Every step in the development of a great discovery bears the name of its originator. Behind the most complex of modern inventions… There was no collective achievement involved. There never has been. There never will be. There never can be. There is no collective brain.” (Pg. 310)
Of the atomic bomb project in WWII, she comments, “Now we come to the part played by the government. What was the most significant thing about it? The fact that the government did not attempt to run the bomb project. The government and the Army took orders from the scientists---not vice versa. The government provided the means---and let the scientists do the work as they wished… The part played by the government in the bomb project is not the part people advocate when they speak of government control. A government project is RUN by the government. A private industry controlled by government takes ORDERS from the government. This is the exact opposite of what happened on the bomb project.” (Pg. 323-324)
She asserts, “Men’s intellectual capacities have always been so unequal that to the thinkers the majority of their brothers have probably always seemed subhuman… We may still be in evolution, as a species, and living side by side with some ‘missing links’… We do not know to what extent the majority of man are no rational… But we do know that mankind as a whole and each man as an individual has a CHANCE to survive and succeed only to the degree of their general and individual intelligence.” (Pg. 466-467)
In 1946, she explains, “the idea of writing a philosophical non-fiction book bored me; in such a book, the purpose would actually be to teach others, to present my ideas to THEM. In a book of fiction the purpose is to create, for myself, the kind of world I want and to live in it while I am creating it; then, as a secondary consequence, to let others enjoy this world, and to the extent that they can.” (Pg. 479)
In 1953, she argues, “When we say that nobody actually believes in God, it is true, if by ‘belief’ we mean the equivalent of a rational conviction. But the … psychological ‘gimmick,’ of mystics is the fact that they do not ‘BELIEVE’ in reality, either… No, they do not ‘believe’ in God in the same way as they ‘believe’ in food, money or their material existence---but their material existence has no full reality for them, either---and THAT is some special state of consciousness, that is the root of the faking, the pretense, the going through an act, the unreality which I sense about most people and which I hate more than anything else, that is the form of their Death Premise, as if they do not merely wish to destroy existence, but have never even permitted existence to exist.” (Pg. 652)
In 1958, she wrote, “The real crux of this issue is that philosophy is primarily epistemology---the science of the means, the rules, and the methods of human knowledge. Epistemology is the base of all other sciences and one necessary for man because man is a being of volitional consciousness---a being who has to discover, not only the content of his knowledge, but also the means by which he is to acquire knowledge…. ‘Existence exists’ (or identity plus causality) is all there is to metaphysics. All the rest is epistemology.” (Pg. 699)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying Ayn Rand and Objectivism.
Leonard Peikoff’s Foreword to this 1997 states, “Ayn Rand’s ‘Journals’---my name for her notes to herself through the decades----is the bulk of her still unpublished work, arranged chronologically. What remains to be published are two lecture courses on writing, presently being edited, and her old film scripts. The Journals contains most of AR’s notes for her three main novels… and some notes from her final decades… Aside from occasional pieces… the AR material in this book was written for herself, for her own clarity… nor did AR intend to publish it. Obviously, therefore, nothing in the book may be taken as definitive of her ideas… Despite its unedited character, however, the Journals is a treat to read, because it is the raw evidence of AR’s continuous growth … both as a philosopher and as an artist… in regard both to depth and to truth.”
In an early entry, Rand wrote, “Achievement is the aim of life. Life is achievement. The sense of achievement---breaking through obstacles… Achievement---give yourself an aim, something you WANT to do, then go after it, breaking through everything, with nothing in mind but you aim, all will, all concentration---and GET IT.” (Pg. 8)
In an early philosophic journal she began at age 29, she wrote, “I believe… that the worst curse on mankind is the ability to consider ideals as something quite abstract and detached from everyday life… I hold religion mainly responsible for this. I want to prove that religion breaks a character before it’s formed, in childhood, by teaching a child lies before he knows what a lie is, by breaking him of the habit of thinking before he has begun to think, by making him a hypocrite before he knows any other possible attitude toward life… Faith is the worst curse of mankind; it is the exact antithesis an enemy of thought… I want to be known as the greatest champion of reason and the greatest enemy of religion.” (Pg. 66-68)
In 1943, she wrote, “Altruism is spiritual cannibalism. If it is so wrong to eat another man’s body---why is it right to feed upon his soul for one’s survival? The man who wishes to live for others is merely confirming his inferiority. The infallible test of a man’s value is the degree of his indignation against the idea of compulsion and against the idea of being like others, of being unoriginal…Man is NOT his brother’s keeper… The altruist’s inevitable concern with the inferior---its reasons and results.” (Pg. 245)
In 1945, she wrote, “Not on altruism: in private and voluntary instances of help to another person (and this is only KINDNESS, not ALTRUISM) it works well ONLY when the recipient of help is a worthwhile person… who is temporarily in need, purely through accident, not through his own nature. Such a person eventually gets back on his own feet and feels benevolence (or gratitude) toward the one who helped him. But when the recipient is essentially a ‘passive’ person, chronically in need through his own nature, the help of another gets him deeper into parasitism and has vicious results: he hates the benefactor. Therefore, here’s the paradox about ‘helping another’: one can only help those who don’t actually need it.” (Pg. 270-271)
She states, “Regarding the golden rule:… This is used in support of altruism. In that way, it would imply that you must give out to charity because you want to be an object of charity yourself. Or---you must sacrifice yourself to others because you want them to sacrifice themselves to you. Actually, the golden rule can work ONLY in application to MY morality: you do not sacrifice yourself to others and you do not wish them to sacrifice themselves to you…. You DO NOT WISH to live as an object of charity---and you do not hand charity out to others.” (Pg. 277)
In 1946, she argues, “There is no anonymous achievement. There is no collective creation. No step was taken anywhere… by a group of men working in unison under the guidance of a majority vote. Every step in the development of a great discovery bears the name of its originator. Behind the most complex of modern inventions… There was no collective achievement involved. There never has been. There never will be. There never can be. There is no collective brain.” (Pg. 310)
Of the atomic bomb project in WWII, she comments, “Now we come to the part played by the government. What was the most significant thing about it? The fact that the government did not attempt to run the bomb project. The government and the Army took orders from the scientists---not vice versa. The government provided the means---and let the scientists do the work as they wished… The part played by the government in the bomb project is not the part people advocate when they speak of government control. A government project is RUN by the government. A private industry controlled by government takes ORDERS from the government. This is the exact opposite of what happened on the bomb project.” (Pg. 323-324)
She asserts, “Men’s intellectual capacities have always been so unequal that to the thinkers the majority of their brothers have probably always seemed subhuman… We may still be in evolution, as a species, and living side by side with some ‘missing links’… We do not know to what extent the majority of man are no rational… But we do know that mankind as a whole and each man as an individual has a CHANCE to survive and succeed only to the degree of their general and individual intelligence.” (Pg. 466-467)
In 1946, she explains, “the idea of writing a philosophical non-fiction book bored me; in such a book, the purpose would actually be to teach others, to present my ideas to THEM. In a book of fiction the purpose is to create, for myself, the kind of world I want and to live in it while I am creating it; then, as a secondary consequence, to let others enjoy this world, and to the extent that they can.” (Pg. 479)
In 1953, she argues, “When we say that nobody actually believes in God, it is true, if by ‘belief’ we mean the equivalent of a rational conviction. But the … psychological ‘gimmick,’ of mystics is the fact that they do not ‘BELIEVE’ in reality, either… No, they do not ‘believe’ in God in the same way as they ‘believe’ in food, money or their material existence---but their material existence has no full reality for them, either---and THAT is some special state of consciousness, that is the root of the faking, the pretense, the going through an act, the unreality which I sense about most people and which I hate more than anything else, that is the form of their Death Premise, as if they do not merely wish to destroy existence, but have never even permitted existence to exist.” (Pg. 652)
In 1958, she wrote, “The real crux of this issue is that philosophy is primarily epistemology---the science of the means, the rules, and the methods of human knowledge. Epistemology is the base of all other sciences and one necessary for man because man is a being of volitional consciousness---a being who has to discover, not only the content of his knowledge, but also the means by which he is to acquire knowledge…. ‘Existence exists’ (or identity plus causality) is all there is to metaphysics. All the rest is epistemology.” (Pg. 699)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying Ayn Rand and Objectivism.
June 29, 2025
You have to be a true Ayn Rand fan to enjoy / appreciate this book. I am, but there were also many times I wanted to put it down due to her long-winded-ness or arrogance. Yet, my eyes would skim ahead, and something would catch my attention, and I'd be pulled back in again.
Part 1 is a good opener, introducing us to Ayn and how she learned about herself as she navigated Hollywood.
Part 2 is fantastic if you read The Fountainhead some years ago, and you don't really want to read it again but want a refresher. I found the material engaging, but only because I had prior knowledge of the book and was in the exact position of wanting to revisit it without reading it over.
Part 3 is great for Ayn's true political involvement. The times she experienced must have shaped her work... she presented it as fiction but she was living it as fact.
Part 4 is very similar to part two, in that if you have not read the novels you won't care at all. The notes are about the shaping of the book and even the outlines are terse. Much like the book itself, this is the section where I skimmed the most - I wish the language in bother were tighter. The message could have a much broader reach if it didn't require so much patience.
Part 5 was probably the least enjoyable. There is a great page where Ayn talks about when she learned after her fiction books were published, and how the public reacted to them. Otherwise, I struggled with seeing the value.
The struggles between independent thinkers and "parasites" is as real today as in her time. It's a tale as old as man, except Rand captured it and articulated it in such a raw way as to be original.
Part 1 is a good opener, introducing us to Ayn and how she learned about herself as she navigated Hollywood.
Part 2 is fantastic if you read The Fountainhead some years ago, and you don't really want to read it again but want a refresher. I found the material engaging, but only because I had prior knowledge of the book and was in the exact position of wanting to revisit it without reading it over.
Part 3 is great for Ayn's true political involvement. The times she experienced must have shaped her work... she presented it as fiction but she was living it as fact.
Part 4 is very similar to part two, in that if you have not read the novels you won't care at all. The notes are about the shaping of the book and even the outlines are terse. Much like the book itself, this is the section where I skimmed the most - I wish the language in bother were tighter. The message could have a much broader reach if it didn't require so much patience.
Part 5 was probably the least enjoyable. There is a great page where Ayn talks about when she learned after her fiction books were published, and how the public reacted to them. Otherwise, I struggled with seeing the value.
The struggles between independent thinkers and "parasites" is as real today as in her time. It's a tale as old as man, except Rand captured it and articulated it in such a raw way as to be original.
November 14, 2018
An insight into one of the most powerful writers involved with the blacklisting of Hollywood. Rand made baseless accusations against people she never met and attempts to explain her reasons in her journals and letters. Her continued power over the American economy and politics is tied to her objectivist philosophy, the cult-like following she created for herself, and the incredible power that she gained over our culture by acting to paralyze it. As a Soviet immigrant, novelist and Hollywood script writer, Rand's resume does not prepare one for the problematic view she had on the world or her vindictive nature. This book also includes some references to her testimony for the House Un-American Committee.
July 30, 2018
This book revealed a few things, but not much more than a thin outline of AR's plans for a final novel, *To Lorne Dieterling* and a few extra characters for *Atlas Shrugged.* There were notes on epistemology, and another book (between *Fountainhead* and *AS*) which would have been nonfiction. Doubtless she used some of this for later non-fiction. It did show how her mind worked to plan her novels, and in a way, shows how limited was her focus. She apparently had no notes for *Anthem* or the editor chose not to include them.
August 3, 2019
A book which has consumed a year of my life. I feel like I have internalized the AR philosophy. Impressed by her original thinking , conviction and the detailed world and philosophy she set up for her every book. Truly a fountainhead.
November 4, 2024
It may have taken me more than 3 years to get through, but I thoroughly enjoyed The Journals of Ayn Rand. It was fascinating to see her thought develop over decades—and to trace all the effort she put into researching and writing her books.
Want to read
July 19, 2020elibrary
August 5, 2017
What a treat to read. Some stunning and refreshing passages.
Read
October 29, 2018p 419
The creator's greatest tie to the world is the fact that he will not (ital) surrender the world to the parasites. He realizes that it is his proper function to shape the world to his wishes. And he struggles to do it no matter what obstacles the parasites put in his way. But by tolerating them or compromising by accepting their terms, he succeeds only in creating their (ital) world -- or in keeping it going.
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The creator's greatest tie to the world is the fact that he will not (ital) surrender the world to the parasites. He realizes that it is his proper function to shape the world to his wishes. And he struggles to do it no matter what obstacles the parasites put in his way. But by tolerating them or compromising by accepting their terms, he succeeds only in creating their (ital) world -- or in keeping it going.
?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 8, 2018
the book is pretty much unique!!
February 11, 2013
Lot of amazing passages and nice clarity of thought for a woman who did not learn English no earlier than her early tees.
Perhaps one of the most wickedly brilliant lines was when she observed how, while capitalism encourages people to bring forth their best, socialism is a disease that encourages people to appear weak and needy.
Also offered a glimpse into the thought processes that went into her books. (Including some characters being eliminated as she ultimately felt some redundant.) Definitely one of those books that offers some daily insight if you were to only read a couple pages a day.
Perhaps one of the most wickedly brilliant lines was when she observed how, while capitalism encourages people to bring forth their best, socialism is a disease that encourages people to appear weak and needy.
Also offered a glimpse into the thought processes that went into her books. (Including some characters being eliminated as she ultimately felt some redundant.) Definitely one of those books that offers some daily insight if you were to only read a couple pages a day.
August 5, 2016
Tremendous insights! More raw and unvarnished thinking from Ayn Rand. Her journal entries present a personality that is consistent with her published work, but it's so interesting to see her raw and candid thoughts. I especially appreciate her notes on characters and ideas that she goes on to develop in her fiction (notably Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
January 21, 2015
Como todo el trabajo de Rand este libro no tiene desperdicio. Es fantástico poder ver cómo estructuraba su escritura, cómo pensaba, como organizaba sus ideas. Es asombrosa su lucidez, su claridad mental. Un libro indispensable para los que quieran saber más de Rand, así como para quienes aman la literatura y están interesados en los procesos creativos.
June 18, 2008
Very interesting...picked this up for an essay I had to write on Anthem and ended up loving it and reading most of the essays. Shows lots of Rand's ideas about her philosophy of objectivism and such. Overall a nice book for any Rand fan.
July 26, 2012
So far I'm just reading the Atlas Shrugged section, since that is the novel I've most recently finished. This book is a collection of her working notebooks for her novels. If you'd like to see how one author determined her themes and then hashed out her stories to fit them, this is a fun read.
July 23, 2007
Writers Reference Book. This an awesome book for Ayn Rand fans and anyone aspiring to become a writer. It's a great reference guide with first hand notes of a great American writers.
June 4, 2009
I am falling deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole....
May 12, 2009
Thought behind fiction and philosophical writings.
Read
September 23, 2010The Journals of Ayn Rand by Ayn Rand (1999)
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews