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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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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
Hold
Question
Liberty
Society
Never
Cannibals
Cannibal
Arise
Except

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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.
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you are never called upon to prove a negative. that's a law of logic.
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Do not keep silent when your own ideas and values are being attacked. If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the fault of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell.
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The fortune my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.
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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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You love people, not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for their values their virtues.
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To say 'I love you' one must first be able to say the 'I.'
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Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.
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What is morality, she asked. Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price.
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Compromise now, because you'll have to later, anyway, only then you'll have gone through things you'll wish you hadn't.
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A good quotation must be a complete entity. It must be like a headline - sharp, clear, whole.
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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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The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.
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That an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.
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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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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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Courage and confidence are practical necessities . . . courage is the practical form of being true to existence, of being true to truth, and confidence is the practical form of being true to one’s own consciousness.
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Those who say theory and practice are two unrelated realms are fools in one and scoundrels in the other.
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You don't build for the way people live, but for the way they should live. I don't write about people as they are, but as they could be and should be.
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The conservatives want to rule man's consciousness the liberals, his body.
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