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Serenity comes from the ability to say “Yes” to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say “No” to the wrong choices made by others.

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
Existence
Choices
Wrong
Ability
Comes
Serenity
Others
Bravery
Made
Novelists
Courage

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People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism.
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She stood at the window, her arms spread wide, holding on to each side of the frame, it was as if she held a piece of the city.
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If a drought strikes them, animals perish--man builds irrigation canals if a flood strikes them, animals perish--man builds dams if a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish--man writes the Constitution of the United States.
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Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.
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Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.
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The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may only resort to force only against those who start the use of force.
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Love is our response to our highest values.
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And man will go on. Man, not men.
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I take no pride in hopeless longing I wouldn't hold a stillborn aspiration. I'd want to have it, to make it, to live it.
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Her face lay still on the air under his face.
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The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren
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Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.
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If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose . . . the fact that they were the people who created the phrase to make money. No other language or nation had ever used these words before. . . . Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.
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The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind.
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The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.
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Creation comes before distribution -- or there will be nothing to distribute.
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Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. Virtue is the act by which one aims and/or keeps it.
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It's not about who's going to let me it's about who's going to stop me.
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To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.
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Creation comes before distribution - or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.
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