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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.

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
Government
Benefits
Giving
Humor
Every
Liberty
Unearned
Men
Economy
Interference
Economic
Expense
Politics
Expenses
Force
Consists
Others
Benefit

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Face a challenge and find joy in the capacity to meet it.
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I agree that [marriage] should be treated like a business deal. But every business deal has to have its own terms and its own kind of currency.
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It's such a waste to be subtle and vicious with people who don't even know that you're being subtle and vicious
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The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may only resort to force only against those who start the use of force.
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The fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.
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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!
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To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.
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God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive.
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The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.
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Capitalism has been called a system of greed—yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of.
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Humor is not an unconditional virtue its moral character depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue to laugh at the good, is a hideous vice. Too often, humor is used as the camouflage of moral cowardice.
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This is the age othe common man, they tell us-a title which any man may claim to the extent osuch distinction as he has managed not to achieve.
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It is not as late as you think. It is merely early - in the age of the rebirth of individualism.
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If you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty.
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Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
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The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology.
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A rational man knows-or makes it a point to discover-the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come.
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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.
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There's nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.
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