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The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time.

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
State
States
Totalitarian
Matter
Welfare
Time
Economics
Difference
Differences
Liberty
Economic

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The writer who develops a beautiful style, but has nothing to say, represents a kind of arrested esthetic development he is like a pianist who acquires a brilliant technique by playing finger-exercises, but never gives a concert.
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When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter if I am right, he will learn if I am wrong, I will one of us will win, but both will profit.
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Genius is an exaggeration of dimension. So is elephantiasis. Both may be only a disease.
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I don't like people who speak or think in terms of gaining anybody's confidence. If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not.
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Hank, this is great. Yes. He said it simply, openly. There was no flattered pleasure in his voice, and no modesty. This, she knew, was a tribute to her, the rarest one person could pay another: the tribute of feeling free to acknowledge one's own greatness, knowing that it is understood.
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Compromise now, because you'll have to later, anyway, only then you'll have gone through things you'll wish you hadn't.
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Identify the dominant philosophy of a society and you can predict its future.
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Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.
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The only man never to be redeemed is the man without passion.
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There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men.
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No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.
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I guard my treasures: my thoughts, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.
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And here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone the word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which will not die should we all perish in battle. The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory. The sacred word: EGO
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I am unwilling to be wholly good—and please don't regard me as wholly evil!
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Within the extent of your knowledge, you are right.
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Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.
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