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The nation which once held the creed that greatness is achieved by production, is now told that it is achieved by squalor.
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
Greatness
Creeds
Nation
Novelists
Achieve
Achieved
Told
Production
Nations
Reaching
Productions
Squalor
Philosopher
Playwright
Held
Creed
More quotes by Ayn Rand
Emotions are not tools of cognition. They tell you nothing about the nature of reality.
Ayn Rand
When I listen to a symphony I love, I don't get from it what the composer got. His 'Yes' was different from mine. He could have no concern for mine and no exact conception of it. That answer is too personal to each man. But in giving himself what he wanted, he gave me a great experience.
Ayn Rand
In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads.
Ayn Rand
A story is an end in itself. It is not written to teach, sell, explain or destroy anything. It is not written even to entertain. It is written as a man is born - an organic whole, dictated only by its own laws and its own necessity - an end in itself, not a means to an end.
Ayn Rand
The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendour that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach.
Ayn Rand
An idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol.
Ayn Rand
A rational process is a moral process.
Ayn Rand
I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.
Ayn Rand
Reason can be fought with reason. How are you going to fight the unreasonable? The trouble with you, my dear, and with most people, is that you don’t have sufficient respect for the senseless. The senseless is the major factor in our lives. You have no chance if it is your enemy.
Ayn Rand
I don't like people who speak or think in terms of gaining anybody's confidence. If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not.
Ayn Rand
It is a sin to write this.
Ayn Rand
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.
Ayn Rand
What is morality, she asked. Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price.
Ayn Rand
There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men.
Ayn Rand
It stands to reason that if sacrifices are being given, somebody is collecting sacrifices.
Ayn Rand
One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor.
Ayn Rand
Creation comes before distribution -- or there will be nothing to distribute.
Ayn Rand
There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
Ayn Rand
You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.
Ayn Rand
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.
Ayn Rand
