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

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Many words have been granted me, and some are wise, and some are false, but only three are holy: I will it!
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Live a life as a monument to your soul.
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If you know that this life is all that you have, wouldn't you make the most of it?
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Whenever anyone accuses some person of being 'unfeeling,' he means that that person is just. He means that that person has no causeless emotions and will not grant him a feeling which he does not deserve. He means that 'to feel' is to go against reason, against moral values, against reality.
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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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Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.
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The only thing that matters my goal my reward my beginning my end is the work itself. My work done my way. A private personal selfish egotistical motivation. That’s the only way I function. That’s all I am.
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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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A good quotation must be a complete entity. It must be like a headline - sharp, clear, whole.
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Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character.
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The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time.
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Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.
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To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.
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I am unwilling to be wholly good—and please don't regard me as wholly evil!
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Reality confronts man with a great many musts, but all of them are conditional the formula of realistic necessity is You must, if and the if stands for man's choice
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Any alleged 'right' of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.
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The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren
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I agree that [marriage] should be treated like a business deal. But every business deal has to have its own terms and its own kind of currency.
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Ah, there's nothing like tea in the afternoon. When the British Empire collapses, historians will find that it had made but two invaluable contributions to civilization - this tea ritual and the detective novel.
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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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