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You were not born to be a second-hander. Howard Roark to Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead

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
Gail
Fountainhead
Howard
Second
Born
Action
Hander

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him) it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life.
Ayn Rand
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If a life can have a 'theme-song' - and I believe every worthwhile one has - mine is [best] expressed in one word: Individualism.
Ayn Rand
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For they have nothing to fight me with, save the brute force of their numbers. I have my mind.
Ayn Rand
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The only man never to be redeemed is the man without passion.
Ayn Rand
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A culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiate d masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men.
Ayn Rand
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We [entrepreneurs] required that you leave us free to function -- free to think and work as we choose ... -- free to earn our own profits and make our own fortunes ... Such was the price we asked, which you chose to reject as too high.
Ayn Rand
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There were things in my past which I have not liked. But all the things of which I was proud will remain.
Ayn Rand
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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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They talked about nothing in particular, sentences that had meaning only in the sound of the voices, in warm gaiety, in the ease of complete relaxation.
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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The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.
Ayn Rand
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He, too, stood looking at her for a moment - and it seemed to her that it was not a look of greeting after an absence, but the look of someone who had thought of her every day of that year. She could not be certain, it was only an instant, so brief that just as she caught it, he was turning.
Ayn Rand
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One can't love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name.
Ayn Rand
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When I listen to a symphony I love, I don't get from it what the composer got. His 'Yes' was different from mine. He could have no concern for mine and no exact conception of it. That answer is too personal to each man. But in giving himself what he wanted, he gave me a great experience.
Ayn Rand
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Don't think of them now. Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. You're here. It's our time and our life, not theirs. Don't struggle not to be happy. You are. - John Gault
Ayn Rand
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There are two side to every issue.
Ayn Rand
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Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.
Ayn Rand
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There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men.
Ayn Rand
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Place nothing above the verdict of your own mind.
Ayn Rand
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There is no such dichotomy as 'human rights' versus 'property rights.' No human rights can exist without property rights.
Ayn Rand