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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
Fountainhead
Howard
Second
Born
Action
Hander
Gail

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably the man who respects it has earned it.
Ayn Rand
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Civilization does not have to perish. The brutes are winning only by default.
Ayn Rand
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The fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.
Ayn Rand
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The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave.
Ayn Rand
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Rights are not a matter of numbers - and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.
Ayn Rand
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If you want to feel good, be rational.
Ayn Rand
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My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists - and in a single choice: to live.
Ayn Rand
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The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: “Merry Christmas”-not “Weep and Repent.” And the good will is expressed in a material, earthly form-by giving presents to one's friends, or by sending them cards in token of remembrance . . . .
Ayn Rand
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Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage-the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterologic al traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious
Ayn Rand
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Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death.
Ayn Rand
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Did it ever occur to you, that there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires - if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical?
Ayn Rand
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When one turns from reason to faith, when one rejects the absolutism of reality, one undercuts the absolutism of one's consciousness - and one's mind becomes an organ one cannot trust any longer. It becomes what the mystics claim it to be: a tool of distortion.
Ayn Rand
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You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.
Ayn Rand
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Psychologically, the choice to think or not is the choice to focus or not. Existentially, the choice to focus or not is the choice to be conscious or not. Metaphysically, the choice to be conscious or not is the choice of life or death.
Ayn Rand
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We are one...alone...and only...and we love you who are one...alone...and only. We looked into each other's eyes and we knew the breath of a miracle had touched us, and fled, and left us groping vainly. And we felt torn, torn for some word we could not find.
Ayn Rand
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I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you...Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference
Ayn Rand
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I feel that others live up to me, if they want me.
Ayn Rand
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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