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

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Since time immemorial and pre-industrial, 'greed' has been the accusation hurled at the rich by the concrete-bound illiterates who were unable to conceive of the source of wealth or of the motivation of those who produce it.
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All work is an act of philosophy.
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The attack on selfishness is an attack on man's self-esteem to surrender one, is to surrender the other.
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Andrei, did you like the opera? Not particularly. Andrei, do you see what you're missing? I don't think I do, Kira. It's all rather silly. And useless. Can't you enjoy things that are useless, merely because they are beautiful? No. But I enjoyed it. The music? No. The way you listened to it.
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You were not born to be a second-hander. Howard Roark to Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead
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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.
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It is a sin to write this.
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you are never called upon to prove a negative. that's a law of logic.
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I am interested in politics only in order to secure and protect freedom.
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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.
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To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I.’ The meaning of the ‘I’ is an independent, self-sufficient entity that does not exist for the sake of any other person. A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite. The love of a parasite is worth nothing.
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Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
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The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort.
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A culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiate d masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men.
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The government has created a nation of paper criminals. People can be put in jail and lose civil rights and liberties through bureaucratic procedures.The only thing that is keeping you out of jail is government goodwill.
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Civilization does not have to perish. The brutes are winning only by default.
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You love only those who deserve it.
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If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as social gains, if businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as selfish greed.
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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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That which exists possesses identity he could keep it out of existence by refusing to identify it.
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