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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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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
Right
Permission
Must
Acts
Granted
Slave
Society
Whether
Undertaking
Free
Undertakings
Action
Obtain

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I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place.
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Don't think of them now. Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. You're here. It's our time and our life, not theirs. Don't struggle not to be happy. You are. - John Gault
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If you want to feel good, be rational.
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He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it or dismiss it.
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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.
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That which exists possesses identity he could keep it out of existence by refusing to identify it.
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If you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty.
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Aquinas brought an Aristotelian view of reason back into European culture, and lighted the way toward the Renaissance.
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Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.
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The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system - and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.
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If men want to oppose war, it is statism that they must oppose.
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What do I think of President Reagan? The best answer to give would be: I don't think of him. And the more I see, the less I think.
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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.
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