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Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims.

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
Achieved
Command
Emotional
Emotion
Achieve
Happiness
Whims
Whim
Novelists

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Faith is the wors curse of mankind, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought.
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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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You're not sorry. You could've been here if you made the effort. But when did you ever make an effort for anybody but yourself? You're not interested in any of us or in anything we do. You think if you pay the bills, that's enough, don't you? Money! That's all you know. And all you give us is money. Have you even given us any time?
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If men want to oppose war, it is statism that they must oppose.
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A rational man is guided by his thinking - by a process of Reason - not by his feelings and desires.
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Since time immemorial and pre-industrial, 'greed' has been the accusation hurled at the rich by the concrete-bound illiterates who were unable to conceive of the source of wealth or of the motivation of those who produce it.
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The only man never to be redeemed is the man without passion.
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Patience is always rewarded and romance is always round the corner!
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There is no such dichotomy as 'human rights' versus 'property rights.' No human rights can exist without property rights.
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For they have nothing to fight me with, save the brute force of their numbers. I have my mind.
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Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character.
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The conservatives see man as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories - with an electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Washington. The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe - but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread.
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The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence - to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
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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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