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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
Economics
Deal
Deals
Liberty
Economic
Force
Nature
Impractical
Men
Persuasion

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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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Pleasure is nought but virtue's gayer name-- I wrong her still, I rate her worth too low: Virtue the root, and pleasure is the flow'r.
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I got the idea [for Anthem's theme] in my school days, in Soviet Russia, when I heard all the vicious attacks on individualism, and asked myself what the world would be like if men lost the word 'I.'
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Political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom a free mind and a free market are corollaries.
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If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.
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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.
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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.
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If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society-you are not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not. Only a slave acts on permission. A permission is not a right.
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Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection, and the base of a moral existence.
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A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.
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Sacrifice is the surrender of that which you value in favor of which you dont
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Today we have discovered the word that could not be said. I
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you are never called upon to prove a negative. that's a law of logic.
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It is the basic, metaphysical fact of man's nature -- the connection between his survival and his use of reason -- that capitalism recognizes and protects.
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The more neurotic and evasive a person is, the shorter the range of his interests.
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I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself.
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When a man declares: There are no blacks and whites [in morality] he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: I am unwilling to be wholly good - and please don't regard me as wholly evil!
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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.
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I don’t approve of religion.
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Humor is not an unconditional virtue its moral character depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue to laugh at the good, is a hideous vice. Too often, humor is used as the camouflage of moral cowardice.
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