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The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

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
Suffering
Purpose
Happiness
Objectivism
Enjoy
Suffer
Live
Morality
Life
Humor
Teach
Dies

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We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality
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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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The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.
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He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth. They professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things for which he could wish to be loved.
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Emotions are inherent in your nature, but their content is dictated by your mind. Your emotional capacity is an empty motor, and your values are the fuel with which your mind fills it.
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Each man must live as an end in himself and follow his own rational self-interest.
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I agree that [marriage] should be treated like a business deal. But every business deal has to have its own terms and its own kind of currency.
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Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. Virtue is the act by which one aims and/or keeps it.
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America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.
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If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.
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To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.
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I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself.
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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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The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose.
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I cannot stand Tolstoy, and reading him was the most boring literary duty I ever had to perform, his philosophy and his sense of life are not merely mistaken, but evil, and yet, from a purely literary viewpoint, on his own terms, I have to evaluate him as a good writer.
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Aquinas brought an Aristotelian view of reason back into European culture, and lighted the way toward the Renaissance.
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It's such a waste to be subtle and vicious with people who don't even know that you're being subtle and vicious
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The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence - to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
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All public projects are mausoleums, not always in shapes, but always in cost.
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Do not let your fire go out ... Do not let the Hero in your soul perish ... Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
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