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What whip lashed them to their knees in shame and submission? The worship of the word We.

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
Knees
Shame
Worship
Word
Lashed
Whip
Whips
Submission

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I am unwilling to be wholly good—and please don't regard me as wholly evil!
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Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through.
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If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and ... if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own I would refuse... I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist.
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To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.
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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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Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence.
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whose steps were a restless substitute for flight.
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Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you? He answered, Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one.
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There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.
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The conservatives see man as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories - with an electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Washington. The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe - but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread.
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Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man's capacity to live.
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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 genius must have his freedom and his independence.
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I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.
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A building has integrity, just as a man and just as seldom! It must be true to its own idea, have its own form, and serve its own purpose!
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Do not consider Collectivists as sincere but deluded idealists. The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal brutality is not idealistic, no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to do good by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
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There has never been a philosophy, a theory or a doctrine, that attacked (or 'limited') reason, which did not preach submission to the power of some authority.
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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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The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work.
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Genius is an exaggeration of dimension. So is elephantiasis. Both may be only a disease.
Ayn Rand