Quote

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

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.
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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.
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It was the joy of admiration and of one's own ability, growing together.
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It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth.
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Don't worry. They're all against me. But I have one advantage: they don't know what they want. I do.
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Emotions are not tools of cognition. They tell you nothing about the nature of reality.
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A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition.
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The more neurotic and evasive a person is, the shorter the range of his interests.
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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.
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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.
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Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
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But there are people who'll try to hurt you through the good they see in you--knowing that it's the good, needing it and punishing you for it. Don't let it break you when you discover that.
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An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.
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Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started.
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The social system based on and consonant with the altruist morality-with the code of self-sacrifice- is socialism, in all or any of its variants: fascism, Nazism, communism. All of them treat man as a sacrificial animal to be immolated for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the society, the state.
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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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Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through.
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And man will go on. Man, not men.
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.
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The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it.
Ayn Rand