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Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.

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
Dream
Thrive
Earth
Graves
Greatness
Atheism
Asks
Waiting
Heaven
Whether
Sith

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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The more you learn, the more you know that you know nothing.
Ayn Rand
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Don't worry. They're all against me. But I have one advantage: they don't know what they want. I do.
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You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgement and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been calle anti social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads.
Ayn Rand
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When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.
Ayn Rand
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Identify the dominant philosophy of a society and you can predict its future.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man's capacity to live.
Ayn Rand
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I got the idea [for Anthem's theme] in my school days, in Soviet Russia, when I heard all the vicious attacks on individualism, and asked myself what the world would be like if men lost the word 'I.'
Ayn Rand
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Collectivism requires self-sacrifice, the subordination of one's interests to those of others.
Ayn Rand
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Reason can be fought with reason. How are you going to fight the unreasonable? The trouble with you, my dear, and with most people, is that you don’t have sufficient respect for the senseless. The senseless is the major factor in our lives. You have no chance if it is your enemy.
Ayn Rand
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And man will go on. Man, not men.
Ayn Rand
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The worst evil that you can do, psychologically, is to laugh at yourself. That means spitting in your own face.
Ayn Rand
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Andrei, did you like the opera? Not particularly. Andrei, do you see what you're missing? I don't think I do, Kira. It's all rather silly. And useless. Can't you enjoy things that are useless, merely because they are beautiful? No. But I enjoyed it. The music? No. The way you listened to it.
Ayn Rand
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Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions.
Ayn Rand
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Happiness is not something you have in your hands it's something you carry in your heart. Happiness is one thing that multiplies by division. Happiness is that peculiar sensation you acquire when you are too busy to be miserable. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
Ayn Rand
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I can say-not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological , ethical, political and esthetic roots-that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.
Ayn Rand
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There's nothing of any importance in life — except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value.
Ayn Rand
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An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.
Ayn Rand
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A 'whim' is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause.
Ayn Rand