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The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

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
Many
Makes
Criminals
Things
Power
Laws
Men
Government
Aren
Live
Crime
Declares
Wells
Becomes
Crack
Without
Impossible
Cracks
Well
Wisdom
Breaking
Enough
Law
Libertarian

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Did it ever occur to you, that there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires - if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical?
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I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life.
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When you force a man to act against his own choice and judgment, it's his thinking that you want him to suspend.
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I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline.
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A rational man knows-or makes it a point to discover-the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come.
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The ' pleasure' of being drunk is obviously the pleasure of escaping from the responsibility of Consciousness.
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Her face lay still on the air under his face.
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Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.
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There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men.
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And man will go on. Man, not men.
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You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.
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Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity.
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I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.
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Any group or collective, large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members.
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If a life can have a 'theme-song' - and I believe every worthwhile one has - mine is [best] expressed in one word: Individualism.
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I want it real. I want to know that there is someone, somewhere, who wants it, too. Or else what is the use of seeing it, and working, and burning oneself for an impossible vision? A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry
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Individualism regards man-every man-as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.
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Namely, if I am challenging the base of all these institutions, I'm challenging the moral code of altruism. The precept that man's moral duty is to live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others. Which is the present day morality.
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Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?
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Style is not an end in itself, it is only a means to an end - the means of telling a story.
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