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He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth. They professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things for which he could wish to be loved.

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
Things
Despised
Love
Ignored
Unknown
Affection
Wealth
Loved
Causeless
Wish
Unearned
Reason
Professed

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America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.
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Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.
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Selfishness does not mean only to do things for one's self. One may do things, affecting others, for his own pleasure and benefit. This is not immoral, but the highest of morality.
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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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In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose.
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A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition.
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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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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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Government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.
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If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society-you are not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not. Only a slave acts on permission. A permission is not a right.
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Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.
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Remember that rights are moral principles which define and protect a man's freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other men.
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No man can use his brain to think for another.
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Reality confronts man with a great many musts, but all of them are conditional the formula of realistic necessity is You must, if and the if stands for man's choice
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Do not keep silent when your own ideas and values are being attacked. If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the fault of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell.
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Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man's first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.
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The moral is the chosen, not the forced the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.
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If you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty.
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In order to deal with reality successfully - to pursue and achieve the values which his life requires - man needs self-esteem he needs to be confident of his efficacy and worth.
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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
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