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

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Namely, if I am challenging the base of all these institutions, I'm challenging the moral code of altruism. The precept that man's moral duty is to live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others. Which is the present day morality.
Ayn Rand
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If a dedication page were to precede the total of my work, it would read: To the glory of Man.
Ayn Rand
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I can say-not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological , ethical, political and esthetic roots-that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.
Ayn Rand
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Do it first and feel about it afterwards.' - Dagny Taggart
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Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason.
Ayn Rand
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I feel that others live up to me, if they want me.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system - and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.
Ayn Rand
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That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you. The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen - your values and choices. That which happened by accident - what family you were born into, in what country, and where you went to school - is totally unimportant.
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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Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.
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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you are never called upon to prove a negative. that's a law of logic.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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When you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately, that is to love people without any standard, to love them regardless of whether they have any value or virtue, you are asked to love nobody.
Ayn Rand
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It is true that the welfare-statists are not socialists, that they never advocated or intended the socialization of private property, that they want to 'preserve' private property-with government control of its use and disposal. But that is the fundamental characteristic of fascism.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.
Ayn Rand
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Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy it cannot survive without a philosophical base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go.
Ayn Rand
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A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.
Ayn Rand