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The only thing that matters my goal my reward my beginning my end is the work itself. My work done my way. A private personal selfish egotistical motivation. That’s the only way I function. That’s all I am.

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
Done
Motivation
Thing
Private
Work
Function
Way
Beginning
Egotistical
Personal
Reward
Goal
Selfish
Ends
Rewards
Matter
Matters

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Through the dry phases of calculations in her mind, she noticed that she did have time to feel something: it was the hard, exhilarating pleasure of action.
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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.
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Art is the indispensable medium for the communication of a moral ideal.
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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.
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Civilization does not have to perish. The brutes are winning only by default.
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America's founding Ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more - and nothing less.
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I am an innovator. This is a term of distinction, a term of honor, rather than something to hide or apologize for. Anyone who has new or valuable ideas to offer stands outside the intellectual status quo. But the status quo is not a stream, let alone a 'mainstream'. It is a stagnant swamp. It is the innovators who carry mankind forward.
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Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence.
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Words are a lens to focus one's mind.
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The genius must have his freedom and his independence.
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This god, this one word: I.
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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.
Ayn Rand
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The government was set to protect man from criminals-and the constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed at private citizens, but against the government-as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.
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Who was it that said he needed a fulcrum? Give me an unobstructed right-of-way and I'll show them how to move the earth!
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Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others-misfortu ne is not a mortgage on achievement-fai lure is not a mortgage on success-sufferi ng is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence-man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone’s altar nor for anyone’s cause-life is not one huge hospital.
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Is it advisable to spread out all the conveniences of culture before people to whom a few steps up a stair to a library is a sufficient deterrent from reading?
Ayn Rand
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The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.
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I am unwilling to be wholly good—and please don't regard me as wholly evil!
Ayn Rand
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What whip lashed them to their knees in shame and submission? The worship of the word We.
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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