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In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.

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
Virtuous
Lady
Either
Enjoy
World

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you...Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference
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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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in architecture, mediocrity is more glaringly obvious than in other lines - because there's a huge, physical object such as a building to demonstrate it.
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There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.
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Those who say theory and practice are two unrelated realms are fools in one and scoundrels in the other.
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I am an innovator. This is a term of distinction, a term of honor, rather than something to hide or apologize for. Anyone who has new or valuable ideas to offer stands outside the intellectual status quo. But the status quo is not a stream, let alone a 'mainstream'. It is a stagnant swamp. It is the innovators who carry mankind forward.
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Creation comes before distribution -- or there will be nothing to distribute.
Ayn Rand
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You don't have to see through the eyes of others, hold onto yours, stand on your own judgment, you know that what is, is–say it aloud, like the holiest of prayers, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Ayn Rand
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I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.
Ayn Rand
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Whatever road I take, the guiding star is within me the guiding star and the loadstone which point the way. They point in but one direction. They point to me.
Ayn Rand
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Do you know that my personal crusade in life (in the philosophical sense) is not merely to fight collectivism, nor to fight altruism? These are only consequences, effects, not causes. I am out after the real cause, the real root of evil on earth the irrational.
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Selfishness does not mean only to do things for one's self. One may do things, affecting others, for his own pleasure and benefit. This is not immoral, but the highest of morality.
Ayn Rand
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A good quotation must be a complete entity. It must be like a headline - sharp, clear, whole.
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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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The more neurotic and evasive a person is, the shorter the range of his interests.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him) it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life.
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Don't rely on our knowledge of what's best for your future. We do know, but it can't be best until you know it.
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A culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiate d masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men.
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If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose . . . the fact that they were the people who created the phrase to make money. No other language or nation had ever used these words before. . . . Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.
Ayn Rand