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My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

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
Happiness
Absolute
Reason
Concepts
Men
Achievement
Objectivism
Life
Essence
Noblest
Activity
Heroic
Philosophy
Productive
Moral
Concept
Purpose
Absolutes

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Morally, the promise of an impossible “right” to economic security is an infamous attempt to abrogate the concept of rights. It can and does mean only one thing: a promise to enslave the men who produce, for the benefit of those who don’t.
Ayn Rand
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God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.
Ayn Rand
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Hank, this is great. Yes. He said it simply, openly. There was no flattered pleasure in his voice, and no modesty. This, she knew, was a tribute to her, the rarest one person could pay another: the tribute of feeling free to acknowledge one's own greatness, knowing that it is understood.
Ayn Rand
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My greatest personal mistake is ever to allow a word or moment that “doesn’t count,” i.e., that I do not refer to my own basic principles. Every word, every action, every moment counts. (This is the pattern on which everybody makes mistakes [or] becomes irrational — not relating their one action or one conviction to another.
Ayn Rand
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A rational process is a moral process.
Ayn Rand
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All public projects are mausoleums, not always in shapes, but always in cost.
Ayn Rand
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As we gain knowledge, we do not become more certain, we become certain of more.
Ayn Rand
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An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man's value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man's reason and his emotions
Ayn Rand
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Romantic art is the fuel and the spark plug of a Man's soul. It's task is to set a soul on fire and never let it go out.
Ayn Rand
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There is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.
Ayn Rand
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There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
Ayn Rand
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You don't know how hard I've tried to be left standing all by myself.
Ayn Rand
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We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality
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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The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.
Ayn Rand
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Don't consider our interests or desires. You have no duty to anyone but yourself.
Ayn Rand
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Most American men are repressors.
Ayn Rand
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Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.
Ayn Rand