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Living in a society, instead of on a desert island, does not relieve a man of the responsibility of supporting his own 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
Desert
Instead
Responsibility
Society
Living
Relieve
Doe
Supporting
Men
Island
Life
Islands

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Let me be the child in the story and declare that the Emperor is naked — or that America is culturally bankrupt.
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Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
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Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.
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Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man's first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.
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Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence.
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Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.
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Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others-misfortu ne is not a mortgage on achievement-fai lure is not a mortgage on success-sufferi ng is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence-man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone’s altar nor for anyone’s cause-life is not one huge hospital.
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Let no man posture as an advocate of peace if he proposes or supports any social system that initiates the use of force against individual men, in any form.
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Romantic art is always stylized: the better the art, the cleaner and more attractive and intelligent the stylization.
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A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.
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There is no such dichotomy as 'human rights' versus 'property rights.' No human rights can exist without property rights.
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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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A building has integrity, just as a man and just as seldom! It must be true to its own idea, have its own form, and serve its own purpose!
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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 don't like people who speak or think in terms of gaining anybody's confidence. If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not.
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