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To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight

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
Means
Survival
Reality
Perception
Mean
Threat
Men
Destruction
Like
Sight
Interpose
Judgment
Negate
Physical
Paralyze
Force
Forcing

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The great creators-the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors-stood alone against the men of their time.
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America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.
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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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A reader has to be concerned only with the end result unless he chooses to analyze it, he does not have to know by what means that result was achieved-but it is my job to know.
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The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world
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A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race - and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.
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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.
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Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
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A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.
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Thinking men cannot be ruled ambitious men do not stagnate.
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I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself.
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To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.
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A man who seeks escape from the responsibility of supporting his life by his own thought and effort, and wishes to survive by conquering, ruling and exploiting others, is NOT an Individualist.
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If you agree with some tenets of Objectivism, but disagree with others, do not call yourself an Objectivist give proper authorship credit for the parts you agree with
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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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There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men.
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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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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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I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place.
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Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality
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