Quote

There's nothing of any importance in life — except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value.

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
Life
Wells
Except
Throat
People
Human
Paper
Code
Humans
Value
Ethics
Come
Virtue
Measure
Well
Whatever
Morality
Swindlers
Nothing
Values
Standards
Fleece
Trying
Money
Importance
Rams
Work
Else
Gold
Competence

More quotes by 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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Don't consider our interests or desires. You have no duty to anyone but yourself.
Ayn Rand
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I want to be prepared to claim the greatest virtue of all - that I was a man who made money
Ayn Rand
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If [people] place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man's life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite.
Ayn Rand
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The genius must have his freedom and his independence.
Ayn Rand
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One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor.
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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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!
Ayn Rand
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Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity.
Ayn Rand
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Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.
Ayn Rand
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Degrees do not matter... one does not bargain about inches of evil.
Ayn Rand
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The conservatives want to rule man's consciousness the liberals, his body.
Ayn Rand
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It is a policeman’s duty to retrieve stolen property and return it to its owners. But when robbery becomes the purpose of the law, and the policeman’s duty becomes, not protection, but the plunder of property - then it is an outlaw who has to become a policeman.
Ayn Rand
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Face a challenge and find joy in the capacity to meet it.
Ayn Rand
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A building has integrity, just as a man and just as seldom! It must be true to its own idea, have its own form, and serve its own purpose!
Ayn Rand
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And that night we knew that to hold the body of women in our arms in neither ugly nor shameful, but the one ecstasy granted to the race of men.
Ayn Rand
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If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.
Ayn Rand
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But a few understand that building is a great symbol we live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is a statement of his life.
Ayn Rand
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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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Capitalism demands the best of every man - his rationality - and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him.
Ayn Rand