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Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy . . . Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values, and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.

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
Happiness
Desires
Values
Goals
Desire
Rational
Action
Actions
States
Joy
Nothing
Possible
Contradictory
Men
Goal
Seeks
State
Finds

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Don't ignore your own desires.... Don't sacrifice them. Examine their cause. There is a limit to how much you should have to bear.
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Capitalism and altruism are incompatible they are philosophical opposites they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society.
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No speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgement on a man than on an idea.
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It's true that there's no such thing as free will. We can't help what we are or what we do. It's not our fault. Nobody's to blame for anything. It's all in your background ... and your glands. If you're good, that's no achievement of yours - you were lucky in your glands. If you're rotten, nobody should punish you - you were unlucky, that's all.
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Man's character is the product of his premises.
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Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people's savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments.
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The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren
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Thinking men cannot be ruled ambitious men do not stagnate.
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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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Action without thought is mindlessness, and thought without action is hypocritical.
Ayn Rand
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We didn't really have to take everything so seriously, did we?
Ayn Rand
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Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.
Ayn Rand
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Life is the reward of virtue. And happiness is the goal and reward of life.
Ayn Rand
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There are two side to every issue.
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The view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve, my life and my values could not bring me to that.
Ayn Rand
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Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
Ayn Rand
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I think, therefore I'll think.
Ayn Rand
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The causes of illusions are not pretty to discover. They're either vicious or tragic.
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To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I.’ The meaning of the ‘I’ is an independent, self-sufficient entity that does not exist for the sake of any other person. A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite. The love of a parasite is worth nothing.
Ayn Rand
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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