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If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as social gains, if businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as selfish greed.

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
Workers
Damned
Higher
Businessman
Struggle
Wages
Liberty
Libertarian
Social
Greed
Hailed
Selfish
Businessmen
Profit
Profits
Gains
Libertarianism

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Selfishness does not mean only to do things for one's self. One may do things, affecting others, for his own pleasure and benefit. This is not immoral, but the highest of morality.
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My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
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Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man's first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.
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A BUSINESSMAN cannot force you to buy his product if he makes a mistake, He suffers the consequences if he fails, he takes the loss. A bureaucrat, forces you to obey his decisions, whether you agree with him or not... If he makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences If he fails, He passes the loss on to you, in the form of heavier taxes.
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The ' pleasure' of being drunk is obviously the pleasure of escaping from the responsibility of Consciousness.
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There can be no compromise on moral principles.
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Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.
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We [entrepreneurs] required that you leave us free to function -- free to think and work as we choose ... -- free to earn our own profits and make our own fortunes ... Such was the price we asked, which you chose to reject as too high.
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Romantic art is the fuel and the spark plug of a Man's soul. It's task is to set a soul on fire and never let it go out.
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I cannot stand Tolstoy, and reading him was the most boring literary duty I ever had to perform, his philosophy and his sense of life are not merely mistaken, but evil, and yet, from a purely literary viewpoint, on his own terms, I have to evaluate him as a good writer.
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My dear fellow, who will let you? That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?
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John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains—and he withdrew his fire—until the day when men withdraw their vultures.
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When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion...th at in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing-you may know that your society is doomed.
Ayn Rand
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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.
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A rational man knows-or makes it a point to discover-the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come.
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It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth.
Ayn Rand
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Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.
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...if men are to be ruled, then the enemy is reason.
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Thinking men cannot be ruled ambitious men do not stagnate.
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There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we’re not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge.
Ayn Rand