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To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.

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
Human
Costs
Humans
Desires
Requires
Meaning
Cost
Highest
Virtue
Desire
Rationality

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Don't consider our interests or desires. You have no duty to anyone but yourself.
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The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind.
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Ferris: Are you going to be as impractical as that? Rearden: The evaluation of an action as practical, Dr. Ferris, depends on what it is that one wishes to practice. Ferris: Haven't you always placed your self-interest above all else? Rearden: That is what I am doing right now.
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Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
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Hank, this is great. Yes. He said it simply, openly. There was no flattered pleasure in his voice, and no modesty. This, she knew, was a tribute to her, the rarest one person could pay another: the tribute of feeling free to acknowledge one's own greatness, knowing that it is understood.
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When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him, by force.
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Morally, the promise of an impossible “right” to economic security is an infamous attempt to abrogate the concept of rights. It can and does mean only one thing: a promise to enslave the men who produce, for the benefit of those who don’t.
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An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.
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Your soul has a single basic function-the act of valuing.
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Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.
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The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time.
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The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work.
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Degrees do not matter... one does not bargain about inches of evil.
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Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.
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An individualist is a man who says: 'I will not run anyone's life - nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule or be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone - nor sacrifice anyone to myself.'
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There can be no compromise on moral principles.
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