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To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.

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
Deals
Liberty
Economic
Force
Nature
Impractical
Men
Persuasion
Economics
Deal

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love - because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed value. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone
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Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.
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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
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If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man's only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.
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Morality pertains only to the sphere of man's free will - only to those actions which are open to his choice.
Ayn Rand
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Who was it that said he needed a fulcrum? Give me an unobstructed right-of-way and I'll show them how to move the earth!
Ayn Rand
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You don't have to see through the eyes of others, hold onto yours, stand on your own judgment, you know that what is, is–say it aloud, like the holiest of prayers, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Ayn Rand
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Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgement and nothing can help you escape it - that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life.
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What objectivity and the study of philosophy requires is not an 'open mind,' but an active mind - a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them criticially.
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I take no pride in hopeless longing I wouldn't hold a stillborn aspiration. I'd want to have it, to make it, to live it.
Ayn Rand
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I am only concerned with politics so I may see the day when I don't have to be concerned with politics.
Ayn Rand
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Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.
Ayn Rand
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I think, therefore I'll think.
Ayn Rand
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Married people dont look like they have bedrooms on their minds when they look at each other. In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both...Not both.
Ayn Rand
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I made my fortune by being able to spot a certain kind of man.
Ayn Rand
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Courage and confidence are practical necessities . . . courage is the practical form of being true to existence, of being true to truth, and confidence is the practical form of being true to one’s own consciousness.
Ayn Rand
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In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.
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Ordinary human concern for human distress does not manifest itself ordinarily in the form of a gun aimed at the wallets and earnings of one's neighbors.
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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.
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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