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Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

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
Species
Living
History
Power
Way
Objectivism
Men
Destroyer
Destroyers
Acted

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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The age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a prelude to the age of the cave.
Ayn Rand
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I cannot stand Tolstoy, and reading him was the most boring literary duty I ever had to perform, his philosophy and his sense of life are not merely mistaken, but evil, and yet, from a purely literary viewpoint, on his own terms, I have to evaluate him as a good writer.
Ayn Rand
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To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.
Ayn Rand
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I feel that others live up to me, if they want me.
Ayn Rand
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I am unwilling to be wholly good—and please don't regard me as wholly evil!
Ayn Rand
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Your soul has a single basic function-the act of valuing.
Ayn Rand
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Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.
Ayn Rand
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A BUSINESSMAN cannot force you to buy his product if he makes a mistake, He suffers the consequences if he fails, he takes the loss. A bureaucrat, forces you to obey his decisions, whether you agree with him or not... If he makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences If he fails, He passes the loss on to you, in the form of heavier taxes.
Ayn Rand
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Courage and confidence are practical necessities . . . courage is the practical form of being true to existence, of being true to truth, and confidence is the practical form of being true to one’s own consciousness.
Ayn Rand
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Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?
Ayn Rand
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It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth.
Ayn Rand
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I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.
Ayn Rand
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If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others.
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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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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Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others.
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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No man can use his brain to think for another.
Ayn Rand
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I will not die, it's the world that will end. paraphrase of unknown philosopher
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