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Freedom comes from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue.

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
Critics
Ignorance
Virtue
Seeing
Freedom
Comes
Discovering
Emptiness

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The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
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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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Statism needs war a free country does not. Statism survives by looting a free country survives by producing.
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I am only concerned with politics so I may see the day when I don't have to be concerned with politics.
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Ah, there's nothing like tea in the afternoon. When the British Empire collapses, historians will find that it had made but two invaluable contributions to civilization - this tea ritual and the detective novel.
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The mind is the attribute of man. When man is born, he comes into existence with only one weapon with him--The reasoning mind.
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The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose.
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Guilt is a rope that wears thin.
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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
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My dear fellow, who will let you? That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?
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My greatest personal mistake is ever to allow a word or moment that “doesn’t count,” i.e., that I do not refer to my own basic principles. Every word, every action, every moment counts. (This is the pattern on which everybody makes mistakes [or] becomes irrational — not relating their one action or one conviction to another.
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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 genius must have his freedom and his independence.
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I have no faith at all. I only hold convictions.
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I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.
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As we gain knowledge, we do not become more certain, we become certain of more.
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Degrees do not matter... one does not bargain about inches of evil.
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The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.
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My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
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Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others.
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