Quote

Creation comes before distribution - or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.

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
Comes
Charity
Fountainhead
Nothing
Achievement
Distribute
Need
Praise
Beneficiaries
Needs
Creation
Distribution
Made
Second
Produced
Hander
Men
Taught
Gifts
Dispenses
Liberty
Admire
Beneficiary
Possible
Creator
Shrug

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Love is our response to our highest values.
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But a few understand that building is a great symbol we live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is a statement of his life.
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The end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.
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An individualist is a man who says: 'I will not run anyone's life - nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule or be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone - nor sacrifice anyone to myself.'
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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.
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It was the joy of admiration and of one's own ability, growing together.
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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.
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Dominique as Gail looks at her ... there is a stage of worship which makes the worshiper himself an object of reverence.
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I don’t approve of religion.
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My dear fellow, who will let you? That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?
Ayn Rand
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There's nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.
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It is a policeman’s duty to retrieve stolen property and return it to its owners. But when robbery becomes the purpose of the law, and the policeman’s duty becomes, not protection, but the plunder of property - then it is an outlaw who has to become a policeman.
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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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If the truth shall kill them, let them die.
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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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You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.
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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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It stands to reason that if sacrifices are being given, somebody is collecting sacrifices.
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Let no man posture as an advocate of peace if he proposes or supports any social system that initiates the use of force against individual men, in any form.
Ayn Rand
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This was the great clarity of being beyond emotion, after the reward of having felt everything one could feel.
Ayn Rand