Quote

That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you. The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen - your values and choices. That which happened by accident - what family you were born into, in what country, and where you went to school - is totally unimportant.

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
Even
Anyone
Accidents
Thing
Values
Totally
Something
Family
Importance
Make
Born
Choose
Happens
Went
School
Happen
Country
Choices
Unimportant
Important
Happened
Accident

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?
Ayn Rand
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The conservatives see man as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories - with an electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Washington. The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe - but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread.
Ayn Rand
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A building has integrity, just as a man and just as seldom! It must be true to its own idea, have its own form, and serve its own purpose!
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology.
Ayn Rand
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And here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone the word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which will not die should we all perish in battle. The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory. The sacred word: EGO
Ayn Rand
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A rational man is guided by his thinking - by a process of Reason - not by his feelings and desires.
Ayn Rand
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You don't build for the way people live, but for the way they should live. I don't write about people as they are, but as they could be and should be.
Ayn Rand
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A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack
Ayn Rand
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I am opposed to all forms of control. I am for an absolute, laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy.
Ayn Rand
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Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims.
Ayn Rand
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Words are a lens to focus one's mind.
Ayn Rand
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Don't worry. They're all against me. But I have one advantage: they don't know what they want. I do.
Ayn Rand
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It is not as late as you think. It is merely early - in the age of the rebirth of individualism.
Ayn Rand
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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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There is only one institution that can arrogate to itself the power legally to trade by means of rubber checks: the government. And it is the only institution that can mortgage your future without your knowledge or consent: government securities (and paper money) are promissory notes on future tax receipts, i.e., on your future production.
Ayn Rand
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Did it ever occur to you, that there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires - if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical?
Ayn Rand
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I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you...Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference
Ayn Rand
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Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man's capacity to live.
Ayn Rand
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I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.
Ayn Rand