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Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.

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
Politics
Society
Fountainhead
Political
Savagery
Savages
Privacy
Toward
Civilization
Progress

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?
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You know, I think that only if one feels immensely important can one feel truly light.
Ayn Rand
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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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If parasitism, favoritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence.
Ayn Rand
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Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims.
Ayn Rand
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If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose . . . the fact that they were the people who created the phrase to make money. No other language or nation had ever used these words before. . . . Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.
Ayn Rand
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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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Identify the dominant philosophy of a society and you can predict its future.
Ayn Rand
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Every honest man lives for himself. Every man worth calling a man lives for himself. The one who doesn't - doesn't live at all.
Ayn Rand
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Man's character is the product of his premises.
Ayn Rand
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If a drought strikes them, animals perish--man builds irrigation canals if a flood strikes them, animals perish--man builds dams if a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish--man writes the Constitution of the United States.
Ayn Rand
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All depressions are caused by government interference and the cure is always offered to take more of the poison that caused the disaster. Depressions are not the result of a free economy.
Ayn Rand
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Mysticism requires the notion of the unknowable, which is revealed to some and withheld from others this divides men into those who feel guilt and those who cash in on it.
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.
Ayn Rand
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I made my fortune by being able to spot a certain kind of man.
Ayn Rand
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She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.
Ayn Rand
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I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.
Ayn Rand
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If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society-you are not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not. Only a slave acts on permission. A permission is not a right.
Ayn Rand
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Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.
Ayn Rand
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Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential.
Ayn Rand