But if living organisms and only living organisms confront an action-necessitating alternative, then a “value” is properly defined as an object of a living thing’s goal-directed action. And in that case, according to Rand, it is possible to give an objective, nonarbitrary answer to the question of why living organisms need values and, more specifically, why man needs a code of moral values. The answer is that we and they need values in order to live—and that means that life is the proper standard by which to delineate a code of morality.

- Darryl Wright. Ayn Rand’s Ethics: From The Fountainhead to Atlas Shrugged.