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If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? . . . Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability.

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
Best
Punished
Nothing
Destroying
Make
Survive
Good
Destroy
Rest
Moral
Ability
Wish
Penalized

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A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.
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A man who seeks escape from the responsibility of supporting his life by his own thought and effort, and wishes to survive by conquering, ruling and exploiting others, is NOT an Individualist.
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She had learned, in the slums of her childhood, that honest people were never touchy about the matter of being trusted.
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Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.
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Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Don't ignore your own desires.... Don't sacrifice them. Examine their cause. There is a limit to how much you should have to bear.
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She fell asleep, lying there, her hand clasping his. Her last awareness, before she surrendered the responsibility of consciousness, was the sense of an enormous void, the void of a city and of a continent, where she would never be able to find the man whom she had no right to seek.
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If you want to save capitalism there is only one type of argument that you should adopt, the only one that has ever won in any moral issue: the argument from self-esteem. Check your premises, convince yourself of the rightness of your cause, then fight for capitalism with full, moral certainty.
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It is futile to fight against, if one does not know what one is fighting for.
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Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason.
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Guilt is altruism's stock in trade, and the inducing of guilt is its only means of self-perpetuati on.
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There are no evil thoughts except one the refusal to think.
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If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose . . . the fact that they were the people who created the phrase to make money. No other language or nation had ever used these words before. . . . Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.
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I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals.
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She watched the prairies the rivers, the towns slipping past at an untouchable distance below - and she noted that the sense of detachment one feels when looking at the earth from a plane was the same sense she felt when looking at people: only her distance from people seemed longer. - Dagny Taggart
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The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be.
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Many words have been granted me, and some are wise, and some are false, but only three are holy: I will it!
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The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind.
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A man's rights are not violated by a private individual's refusal to deal with him.
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Life is a value to be bought and thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.
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The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.
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