Quote

If a drought strikes them, animals perish--man builds irrigation canals if a flood strikes them, animals perish--man builds dams if a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish--man writes the Constitution of the United States.

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
Men
Flood
Canals
Strikes
Drought
Animals
Builds
Constitution
Perish
Animal
Pack
United
Packs
Carnivorous
States
Attacks
Irrigation
Writing
Writes
Dams

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Each man must live as an end in himself and follow his own rational self-interest.
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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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A 'whim' is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause.
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An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.
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Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.
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I guard my treasures: my thoughts, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.
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Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason.
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The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral.
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In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them.
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If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society-you are not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not. Only a slave acts on permission. A permission is not a right.
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Collectivism, as an intellectual power and a moral ideal, is dead. But freedom and individualism, and their political expression, capitalism, have not yet been discovered.
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...if men are to be ruled, then the enemy is reason.
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Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims.
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To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love - because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed value. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone
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Any alleged 'right' of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.
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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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People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism.
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There is a fundamental conviction which some people never acquire, some hold only in their youth, and a few hold to the end of their days-the conviction that ideas matter . . . . That ideas matter means that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that one's mind matters . . .
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The genius must have his freedom and his independence.
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When a man declares: There are no blacks and whites [in morality] he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: I am unwilling to be wholly good - and please don't regard me as wholly evil!
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