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every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing, but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he'll rise.

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
Thinking
Intelligence
Willing
Free
Determines
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Degree
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Rise
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Thinks
Men
Degrees

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values the bureaucrat's tool is fear.
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Unjust laws have to be fought ideologically they cannot be fought or corrected by means of mere disobedience and futile martyrdom.
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Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue.
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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.
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Romantic art is the fuel and the spark plug of a Man's soul. It's task is to set a soul on fire and never let it go out.
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The more neurotic and evasive a person is, the shorter the range of his interests.
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If you tell an amateur that his story is not good, he always declares indignantly: 'Oh, but it really happened just like this!' The writer who doesn't understand that this is beside the point is not a writer at all.
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The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.
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It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust but to know.
Ayn Rand
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[Altruism] is a moral system which holds that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the sole justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, value and virtue. This is the moral base of collectivism, of all dictatorships.
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Romantic art is always stylized: the better the art, the cleaner and more attractive and intelligent the stylization.
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To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.
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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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When you force a man to act against his own choice and judgment, it's his thinking that you want him to suspend.
Ayn Rand
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We didn't really have to take everything so seriously, did we?
Ayn Rand
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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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There were things in my past which I have not liked. But all the things of which I was proud will remain.
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Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof. A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of feeling with knowledge.
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There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.
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Political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom a free mind and a free market are corollaries.
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