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The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

Ayn Rand

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Ayn Rand
Age: 77 †
Born: 1905
Born: February 2
Died: 1982
Died: March 6
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Philosopher
Playwright
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
St. Petersburg
Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum
Earth
Claims
Defenders
Humor
Libertarianism
Philosophy
Minority
Liberty
Smallest
Economic
Minorities
Rights
Libertarian
Individual
Claim
Cannot
Deny
Objectivism

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By what he chooses to present and by how he presents it, any author expresses his fundamental, metaphysical values.
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Love is our response to our highest values.
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The writer who develops a beautiful style, but has nothing to say, represents a kind of arrested esthetic development he is like a pianist who acquires a brilliant technique by playing finger-exercises, but never gives a concert.
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but their eyes were as cold blue glass buttons.
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Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.
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To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I.’ The meaning of the ‘I’ is an independent, self-sufficient entity that does not exist for the sake of any other person. A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite. The love of a parasite is worth nothing.
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Self-esteem is reliance on one's power to think... The man of authentic self-confidence is the man who relies on the judgment of his own mind.
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Do not ever say that the desire to 'do good' by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
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You'd let the whole world perish rather than soil that immaculate self of yours with a single spot of which you'd have to be ashamed.
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Money is just a tool. It will take you anywhere you want, but you have to be the driver
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No speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgement on a man than on an idea.
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The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may only resort to force only against those who start the use of force.
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Do not consider Collectivists as sincere but deluded idealists. The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal brutality is not idealistic, no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to do good by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
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Courage and confidence are practical necessities . . . courage is the practical form of being true to existence, of being true to truth, and confidence is the practical form of being true to one’s own consciousness.
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Freedom of association includes the freedom not to associate.
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Creation comes before distribution -- or there will be nothing to distribute.
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I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.
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Collectivism requires self-sacrifice, the subordination of one's interests to those of others.
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