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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
Howard
Second
Born
Action
Hander
Gail
Fountainhead

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.
Ayn Rand
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I am interested in politics only in order to secure and protect freedom.
Ayn Rand
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Don't consider our interests or desires. You have no duty to anyone but yourself.
Ayn Rand
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My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.
Ayn Rand
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Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras whenever it fell, so did mankind.
Ayn Rand
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The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it.
Ayn Rand
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I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.
Ayn Rand
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The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral.
Ayn Rand
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Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.
Ayn Rand
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Let me be the child in the story and declare that the Emperor is naked — or that America is culturally bankrupt.
Ayn Rand
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Creation comes before distribution -- or there will be nothing to distribute.
Ayn Rand
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The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.
Ayn Rand
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An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.
Ayn Rand
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It is true that the welfare-statists are not socialists, that they never advocated or intended the socialization of private property, that they want to 'preserve' private property-with government control of its use and disposal. But that is the fundamental characteristic of fascism.
Ayn Rand
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When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.
Ayn Rand
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She watched the prairies the rivers, the towns slipping past at an untouchable distance below - and she noted that the sense of detachment one feels when looking at the earth from a plane was the same sense she felt when looking at people: only her distance from people seemed longer. - Dagny Taggart
Ayn Rand
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Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy . . . Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values, and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.
Ayn Rand
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A 'whim' is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause.
Ayn Rand
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A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.
Ayn Rand
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Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values the bureaucrat's tool is fear.
Ayn Rand