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Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it.

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
Wealth
Objectives
Values
Gun
Doe
Expected
Backed
Gold
Aimed
Exist
Mortgage
Paper
Equivalent
Value
Objective
Produce
Produced

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter if I am right, he will learn if I am wrong, I will one of us will win, but both will profit.
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The only thing that matters my goal my reward my beginning my end is the work itself. My work done my way. A private personal selfish egotistical motivation. That’s the only way I function. That’s all I am.
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To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love - because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed value. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone
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By what he chooses to present and by how he presents it, any author expresses his fundamental, metaphysical values.
Ayn Rand
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We are one...alone...and only...and we love you who are one...alone...and only. We looked into each other's eyes and we knew the breath of a miracle had touched us, and fled, and left us groping vainly. And we felt torn, torn for some word we could not find.
Ayn Rand
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If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man's only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.
Ayn Rand
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He, too, stood looking at her for a moment - and it seemed to her that it was not a look of greeting after an absence, but the look of someone who had thought of her every day of that year. She could not be certain, it was only an instant, so brief that just as she caught it, he was turning.
Ayn Rand
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All work is an act of philosophy.
Ayn Rand
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I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life.
Ayn Rand
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Life is a value to be bought and thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.
Ayn Rand
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Who was it that said he needed a fulcrum? Give me an unobstructed right-of-way and I'll show them how to move the earth!
Ayn Rand
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It's not about who's going to let me it's about who's going to stop me.
Ayn Rand
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Genius is an exaggeration of dimension. So is elephantiasis. Both may be only a disease.
Ayn Rand
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Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one’s consciousness can permit the faking of existence.
Ayn Rand
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I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.
Ayn Rand
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...if men are to be ruled, then the enemy is reason.
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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Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started.
Ayn Rand
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Reality confronts man with a great many musts, but all of them are conditional the formula of realistic necessity is You must, if and the if stands for man's choice
Ayn Rand
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Sacrifice is the surrender of that which you value in favor of which you dont
Ayn Rand