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Capitalism has been called a system of greed—yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of.

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
Living
Greed
Tribal
Ever
Capitalism
Heights
Standards
Poorest
Raised
Conceive
Citizens
Gang
Equal
Begun
System
Standard
Called
Height
Collectivist

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Namely, if I am challenging the base of all these institutions, I'm challenging the moral code of altruism. The precept that man's moral duty is to live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others. Which is the present day morality.
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Action without thought is mindlessness, and thought without action is hypocritical.
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The only man never to be redeemed is the man without passion.
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Collectivism, as an intellectual power and a moral ideal, is dead. But freedom and individualism, and their political expression, capitalism, have not yet been discovered.
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every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing, but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he'll rise.
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We the Living is not a novel 'about Soviet Russia.' It is a novel about Man against the State. Its basic theme is the sanctity of human life - using the word 'sanctity' not in a mystical sense, but in the sense of 'supreme value.'
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It was the joy of admiration and of one's own ability, growing together.
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God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive.
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One can study what exists and how consciousness functions but one cannot analyze (or “prove”) existence as such, or consciousness as such. These are irreducible primaries. (An attempt to “prove” them is self-contradict ory: it is an attempt to “prove” existence by means of nonexistence, and consciousness by means of unconsciousness .)
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Genius is an exaggeration of dimension. So is elephantiasis. Both may be only a disease.
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Many words have been granted me, and some are wise, and some are false, but only three are holy: I will it!
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Those who say theory and practice are two unrelated realms are fools in one and scoundrels in the other.
Ayn Rand
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Your soul has a single basic function-the act of valuing.
Ayn Rand
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and he said her name to fill the space of five years.
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Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence.
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What objectivity and the study of philosophy requires is not an 'open mind,' but an active mind - a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them criticially.
Ayn Rand
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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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You don't have to see through the eyes of others, hold onto yours, stand on your own judgment, you know that what is, is–say it aloud, like the holiest of prayers, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
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Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage-the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterologic al traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.
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There can be no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil.
Ayn Rand