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Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.

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
Rewards
Virtue
Goal
Happiness
Evil
Ends
Sacrificial
Life
Fodder
Reward

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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.
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I want to know that I've accomplished something. I want to feel that it had some meaning. At the last summing up, I want to be sure it wasn't all-for nothing.
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Your emotional capacity is an empty motor, and your values are the fuel with which your mind fills it. If you choose a mix of contradictions, it will clog your motor, corrode your transmission and wreck you on your first attempt to move with a machine which you, the driver, have corrupted.
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The conservatives want to rule man's consciousness the liberals, his body.
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Romantic art is the fuel and the spark plug of a Man's soul. It's task is to set a soul on fire and never let it go out.
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The problem is not those who dream, but those who can only dream.
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An individualist is a man who says: 'I will not run anyone's life - nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule or be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone - nor sacrifice anyone to myself.'
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An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man's value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man's reason and his emotions
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Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
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Love is our response to our highest values.
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I have no faith at all. I only hold convictions.
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A reader has to be concerned only with the end result unless he chooses to analyze it, he does not have to know by what means that result was achieved-but it is my job to know.
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A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race - and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.
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