Quote

I want it real. I want to know that there is someone, somewhere, who wants it, too. Or else what is the use of seeing it, and working, and burning oneself for an impossible vision? A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry

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
Else
Wants
Someone
Vision
Real
Impossible
Seeing
Dry
Needs
Working
Fuel
Use
Burning
Running
Somewhere
Spirit
Oneself

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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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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There's only one passion in most artists more violent than their desire for admiration: their fear of identifying the nature of such admiration as they do receive.
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The fact that a man has no claim on others ... does not preclude or prohibit good will among men and does not make it immoral to offer or to accept voluntary, non-sacrificial assistance.
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Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious
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Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.
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Do it first and feel about it afterwards.' - Dagny Taggart
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Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality-not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.
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It's true that there's no such thing as free will. We can't help what we are or what we do. It's not our fault. Nobody's to blame for anything. It's all in your background ... and your glands. If you're good, that's no achievement of yours - you were lucky in your glands. If you're rotten, nobody should punish you - you were unlucky, that's all.
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It is true that the welfare-statists are not socialists, that they never advocated or intended the socialization of private property, that they want to 'preserve' private property-with government control of its use and disposal. But that is the fundamental characteristic of fascism.
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I feel that others live up to me, if they want me.
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She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.
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I want to be prepared to claim the greatest virtue of all - that I was a man who made money
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Man cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy.
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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.
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Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy it cannot survive without a philosophical base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go.
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You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.
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An irresponsible person is a person who makes vague promises, then breaks his word, blames it on circumstances and expects other people to forgive it.
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If a life can have a 'theme-song' - and I believe every worthwhile one has - mine is [best] expressed in one word: Individualism.
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One can't love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name.
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When you have established that one alternative is good and the other is evil, there is no justification for the choice of a mixture. There is no justification ever for choosing any part of what you know to be evil.
Ayn Rand