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No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation , an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as the right to enslave .

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
Servitude
Impose
Obligation
Duty
Another
Right
Unrewarded
Thing
Enslave
Men
Involuntary

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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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Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity.
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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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When a man declares: There are no blacks and whites [in morality] he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: I am unwilling to be wholly good - and please don't regard me as wholly evil!
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What is kinder--to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility beyond their endurance--or to see them as they are, and accept it because it makes them comfortable?
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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
Ayn Rand
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Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
Ayn Rand
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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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I am only concerned with politics so I may see the day when I don't have to be concerned with politics.
Ayn Rand
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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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Do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement.
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It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money.
Ayn Rand
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Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.
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The genius must have his freedom and his independence.
Ayn Rand
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I am interested in politics only in order to secure and protect freedom.
Ayn Rand
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Guilt is altruism's stock in trade, and the inducing of guilt is its only means of self-perpetuati on.
Ayn Rand
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Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: 'Account Overdrawn.'
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Live a life as a monument to your soul.
Ayn Rand
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I cannot stand Tolstoy, and reading him was the most boring literary duty I ever had to perform, his philosophy and his sense of life are not merely mistaken, but evil, and yet, from a purely literary viewpoint, on his own terms, I have to evaluate him as a good writer.
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When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter if I am right, he will learn if I am wrong, I will one of us will win, but both will profit.
Ayn Rand