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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.

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
Empty
Hung
Mind
Sentence
Walked
Fill
Sentences
Shape
Shapes
Groping
Neither
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More quotes by Ayn Rand

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For they have nothing to fight me with, save the brute force of their numbers. I have my mind.
Ayn Rand
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A good novel is an indivisible sum every scene, sequence and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization.
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Allies never trust each other, but that doesn't spoil their effectiveness.
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He stepped to the window and pointed to the skyscrapers of the city. He said that we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when we would see the lights of New York go out, we would know that our job was done.
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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.
Ayn Rand
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We [entrepreneurs] required that you leave us free to function -- free to think and work as we choose ... -- free to earn our own profits and make our own fortunes ... Such was the price we asked, which you chose to reject as too high.
Ayn Rand
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I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals.
Ayn Rand
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To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.
Ayn Rand
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An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man's value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man's reason and his emotions
Ayn Rand
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Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state ' and nothing else
Ayn Rand
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Mysticism requires the notion of the unknowable, which is revealed to some and withheld from others this divides men into those who feel guilt and those who cash in on it.
Ayn Rand
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Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?
Ayn Rand
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I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
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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When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.
Ayn Rand
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The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
Ayn Rand
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They talked about nothing in particular, sentences that had meaning only in the sound of the voices, in warm gaiety, in the ease of complete relaxation.
Ayn Rand
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Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man's capacity to live.
Ayn Rand
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Compromise now, because you'll have to later, anyway, only then you'll have gone through things you'll wish you hadn't.
Ayn Rand
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It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money.
Ayn Rand