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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

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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
Story
Stories
Bankrupt
America
Culturally
Children
Emperor
Declare
Naked
Intellectual
Child

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion. To declare that “everybody is white” or “everybody is black” or “everybody is neither white nor black, but gray,” is not a moral judgment, but an escape from the responsibility of moral judgment.
Ayn Rand
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An idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol.
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The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.
Ayn Rand
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You'd let the whole world perish rather than soil that immaculate self of yours with a single spot of which you'd have to be ashamed.
Ayn Rand
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I want it real. I want to know that there is someone, somewhere, who wants it, too. Or else what is the use of seeing it, and working, and burning oneself for an impossible vision? A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry
Ayn Rand
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The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word 'selfishness' is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual 'package-deal,' which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.
Ayn Rand
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If you tell an amateur that his story is not good, he always declares indignantly: 'Oh, but it really happened just like this!' The writer who doesn't understand that this is beside the point is not a writer at all.
Ayn Rand
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Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.
Ayn Rand
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Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state ' and nothing else
Ayn Rand
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To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense.
Ayn Rand
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I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline.
Ayn Rand
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Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.
Ayn Rand
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Show me your achievement, and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.
Ayn Rand
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I don't like people who speak or think in terms of gaining anybody's confidence. If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others-misfortu ne is not a mortgage on achievement-fai lure is not a mortgage on success-sufferi ng is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence-man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone’s altar nor for anyone’s cause-life is not one huge hospital.
Ayn Rand
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In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.
Ayn Rand
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As long as men are free to speak, a small, rational minority will always prevail over an irrational majority.
Ayn Rand