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Remember that rights are moral principles which define and protect a man's freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other men.

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
Protect
Principles
Rights
Moral
Freedom
Obligations
Action
Impose
Remember
Define
Men
Obligation

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Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.
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Truth is the recognition of reality reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.
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In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary.
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I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.
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When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter if I am right, he will learn if I am wrong, I will one of us will win, but both will profit.
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Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work, pride is the result.
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Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.
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An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.
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Creation comes before distribution - or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.
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When you have established that one alternative is good and the other is evil, there is no justification for the choice of a mixture. There is no justification ever for choosing any part of what you know to be evil.
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We are one...alone...and only...and we love you who are one...alone...and only. We looked into each other's eyes and we knew the breath of a miracle had touched us, and fled, and left us groping vainly. And we felt torn, torn for some word we could not find.
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Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you? He answered, Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one.
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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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There are two side to every issue.
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He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it or dismiss it.
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Emotions are not tools of cognition. They tell you nothing about the nature of reality.
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I think, therefore I'll think.
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This was the great clarity of being beyond emotion, after the reward of having felt everything one could feel.
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We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
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The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be.
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