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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.

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
Value
Aims
Virtue
Perseverance
Values
Acts
Keep
Aim
Gain
Keeps
Gains
Humility

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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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.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.
Ayn Rand
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The most depraved type of human being ... (is) the man without a purpose.
Ayn Rand
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Politically, the goal of today’s dominant trend is statism. Philosophically, the goal is the obliteration of reason psychologically, it is the erosion of ambition.
Ayn Rand
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Her face lay still on the air under his face.
Ayn Rand
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God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.
Ayn Rand
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I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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We didn't really have to take everything so seriously, did we?
Ayn Rand
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To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight
Ayn Rand
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I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.
Ayn Rand
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It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.
Ayn Rand
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The ' pleasure' of being drunk is obviously the pleasure of escaping from the responsibility of Consciousness.
Ayn Rand
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He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it or dismiss it.
Ayn Rand
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I think, therefore I'll think.
Ayn Rand
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Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage-the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterologic al traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.
Ayn Rand
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Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.
Ayn Rand