- Wise-ass Man: Excuse me, Miss Rand. I was wondering if you could give us the essence of your philosophy - standing on one leg.
- 1st Supporter: Go on!
- 2nd Supporter: Sit down!
- Ayn Rand: [Stands on one leg] Metaphysics: objective reality. Epistemology: reason. Ethics: self-interest. Politics: capitalism.
- Frank: [talking about Ayn] She had a typewriter, a Remington Rand, crazy about movies. Came right up to me and said 'you are the embodiment of my ideal man'. I never had a chance.
- Ayn Rand: Love is a command to rise to one's highest potential, the best and noblest vision of ourselves. Love is a reward, the greatest we can earn, granted to us for the moral qualities we have achieved in our lives.
- Ayn Rand: Tell me your principles.
- Nathaniel Branden: To think for myself. To reach my own conclusions. To seek truth, wherever it might lead.
- Nathaniel Branden: I feel as if... as if my whole life I've been on a leaky raft in the middle of the ocean and, and as soon as I cover one leak with my foot, there's another and...
- Barbara: [Interrupting] Yes, alone and sinking.
- Nathaniel Branden: Yes, but after tonight, I think... it's possible to stand on solid ground, to understand, to really know.
- Ayn Rand: You respect his intellect?
- Barbara: Very much.
- Ayn Rand: You share the same principles?
- Barbara: Absolutely.
- Ayn Rand: You accept that emotion ultimately derives from the thinking one has done, or has failed to do?
- Barbara: I do.
- Ayn Rand: Then there is only one possible conclusion. Nate is your ideal man.
- Caroline: I know I still care what other people think. I know I am guilty of social metaphysics. And I know my wish to correct my thinking comes from a desire to please Nathan, who I respect tremendously. And I know that that desire is very, very, very, very wrong.
- Caroline: I do not exist for other people. I must not rely on other people. I must... identify the origins of my emotions. I must establish a rational... I can't.
- Nathaniel Branden: Can't what?
- Caroline: I can't stop thinking about you.