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Action without thought is mindlessness, and thought without action is hypocritical.

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
Mindlessness
Hypocritical
Humor
Action
Thought
Without

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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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.
Ayn Rand
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We the Living is not a novel 'about Soviet Russia.' It is a novel about Man against the State. Its basic theme is the sanctity of human life - using the word 'sanctity' not in a mystical sense, but in the sense of 'supreme value.'
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Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.
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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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Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?
Ayn Rand
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It's true that there's no such thing as free will. We can't help what we are or what we do. It's not our fault. Nobody's to blame for anything. It's all in your background ... and your glands. If you're good, that's no achievement of yours - you were lucky in your glands. If you're rotten, nobody should punish you - you were unlucky, that's all.
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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If [people] place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man's life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite.
Ayn Rand
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But there are people who'll try to hurt you through the good they see in you--knowing that it's the good, needing it and punishing you for it. Don't let it break you when you discover that.
Ayn Rand
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If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.
Ayn Rand
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Freedom comes from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue.
Ayn Rand
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I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals.
Ayn Rand
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Ideas, in a free society, are not a crime- and neither can they serve as the justification of a crime.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.
Ayn Rand
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One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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It's not about who's going to let me it's about who's going to stop me.
Ayn Rand
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Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgement and nothing can help you escape it - that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life.
Ayn Rand
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The Founding Fathers were neither passive, death-worshipin g mystics nor mindless, power-seeking looters as a political group they were a phenomenon unprecedented in history: they were thinkers who were also men of action.
Ayn Rand