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Many words have been granted me, and some are wise, and some are false, but only three are holy: I will it!

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
Granted
False
Holy
Wise
Words
Three

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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As long as men are free to speak, a small, rational minority will always prevail over an irrational majority.
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This was the great clarity of being beyond emotion, after the reward of having felt everything one could feel.
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The more neurotic and evasive a person is, the shorter the range of his interests.
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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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One can't love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name.
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Collectivism answers: The power of society is unlimited. Society may make any laws it wishes, and force them upon anyone in any manner it wishes.
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But what man does out of despair, is not necessarily a key to his character. I have always thought that the real key is in that which he seeks for his enjoyment.
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Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
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I am unwilling to be wholly good—and please don't regard me as wholly evil!
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Ah, there's nothing like tea in the afternoon. When the British Empire collapses, historians will find that it had made but two invaluable contributions to civilization - this tea ritual and the detective novel.
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A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue.
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Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.” An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.
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She knew that she could not have reached this white serenity except as the sum of all the colors, of all the violence she had known.
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It is a policeman’s duty to retrieve stolen property and return it to its owners. But when robbery becomes the purpose of the law, and the policeman’s duty becomes, not protection, but the plunder of property - then it is an outlaw who has to become a policeman.
Ayn Rand
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The government was set to protect man from criminals-and the constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed at private citizens, but against the government-as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.
Ayn Rand
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Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.
Ayn Rand
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Love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one's own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.
Ayn Rand
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What is kinder--to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility beyond their endurance--or to see them as they are, and accept it because it makes them comfortable?
Ayn Rand
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Humor is not an unconditional virtue its moral character depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue to laugh at the good, is a hideous vice. Too often, humor is used as the camouflage of moral cowardice.
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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