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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.

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
Power
Libertarian
Ever
Stupidity
Good
Neither
Stupid
Peace
Motives
Force
Antiwar
Desire
Lust
War
Motive

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Men have died in torture chambers, on the stake, in concentration camps, in front of firing squads, rather than renounce their convictions. The appeaser renounces his under the pressure of a frown on a vacant face.
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This god, this one word: I.
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Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.
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Every honest man lives for himself. Every man worth calling a man lives for himself. The one who doesn't - doesn't live at all.
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When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion...th at in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing-you may know that your society is doomed.
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Do it first and feel about it afterwards.' - Dagny Taggart
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Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion. To declare that “everybody is white” or “everybody is black” or “everybody is neither white nor black, but gray,” is not a moral judgment, but an escape from the responsibility of moral judgment.
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A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.
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I don't like people who speak or think in terms of gaining anybody's confidence. If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not.
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Degrees do not matter... one does not bargain about inches of evil.
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If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.
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Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential.
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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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...if men are to be ruled, then the enemy is reason.
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Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect? Yes. My dear fellow, who will let you? That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?
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A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.
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Art is the indispensable medium for the communication of a moral ideal.
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An idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol.
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