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You'd let the whole world perish rather than soil that immaculate self of yours with a single spot of which you'd have to be ashamed.

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
Ashamed
Soil
Single
Rather
Self
Immaculate
Whole
Perish
World
Spot
Spots

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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When one turns from reason to faith, when one rejects the absolutism of reality, one undercuts the absolutism of one's consciousness - and one's mind becomes an organ one cannot trust any longer. It becomes what the mystics claim it to be: a tool of distortion.
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Self-esteem is reliance on ones power to think.
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I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you...Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference
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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.
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whose steps were a restless substitute for flight.
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There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men.
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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.
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Love is our response to our highest values.
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If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others.
Ayn Rand
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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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Don't think of them now. Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. You're here. It's our time and our life, not theirs. Don't struggle not to be happy. You are. - John Gault
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The more you learn, the more you know that you know nothing.
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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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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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Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.
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.
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As long as men are free to speak, a small, rational minority will always prevail over an irrational majority.
Ayn Rand
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...if men are to be ruled, then the enemy is reason.
Ayn Rand
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There is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.
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