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The attack on selfishness is an attack on man's self-esteem to surrender one, is to surrender the other.

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
Surrender
Esteem
Self
Men
Selfishness
Attack

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Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.
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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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To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.
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One can study what exists and how consciousness functions but one cannot analyze (or “prove”) existence as such, or consciousness as such. These are irreducible primaries. (An attempt to “prove” them is self-contradict ory: it is an attempt to “prove” existence by means of nonexistence, and consciousness by means of unconsciousness .)
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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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Self-esteem is reliance on ones power to think.
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I am interested in politics only in order to secure and protect freedom.
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The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work.
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I am opposed to all forms of control. I am for an absolute, laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy.
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Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.
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Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect? Yes. My dear fellow, who will let you? That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?
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No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation , an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as the right to enslave .
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Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious
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Collectivism, as an intellectual power and a moral ideal, is dead. But freedom and individualism, and their political expression, capitalism, have not yet been discovered.
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To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense.
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