Quote

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

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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.
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Guilt is altruism's stock in trade, and the inducing of guilt is its only means of self-perpetuati on.
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I think. I am. I will.
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Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue.
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A rational man is guided by his thinking - by a process of Reason - not by his feelings and desires.
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To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.
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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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Her face lay still on the air under his face.
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The attack on selfishness is an attack on man's self-esteem to surrender one, is to surrender the other.
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Show me your achievement, and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.
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There's nothing of any importance in life — except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value.
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Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started.
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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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The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort.
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The degree of a country's freedom is the degree of its prosperity.
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The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence - to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
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