Ayn Rand: Novelist and Philosopher

Ayn Rand, initially born Али́са Зино́вьевна Розенба́ум, was a Russian-born American novelist and philosopher in the twentieth century. She was born in Saint Petersburg, and went to Petrograd State University after the Russian Revolution, when women were allowed to enroll in college. She showed early signs of skilled literacy, and was able to read French, German, English, and Russian. She is most well known for her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, in which her famous philosophical ideal, termed Objectivism, is explored. This philosophical system defines itself in that is the moral purpose of life to pursue one's own happiness. This idea is also known as rational self-interest. Ayn Rand is still a prominent figure in literature and philosophy to this day. 

"I am often asked whether I am primarily a novelist or a philosopher. The answer is: both. In a certain sense, every novelist is a philosopher, because one cannot present a picture of human existence without a philosophical framework. . . . In order to define, explain and present my concept of man, I had to become a philosopher in the specific meaning of the term."

— Ayn Rand, “Preface,”
For the New Intellectual

"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."

-Ayn Rand