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Morally, the promise of an impossible “right” to economic security is an infamous attempt to abrogate the concept of rights. It can and does mean only one thing: a promise to enslave the men who produce, for the benefit of those who don’t.

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
Right
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Promise
Enslave
Thing
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Men
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Concepts

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One must differentiate between one's thoughts and one's emotions with full clarity and precision...No discussion, cooperation, agreement, or understanding is possible among men who substitute emotion for proof.
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A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.
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Never ask people about your work.
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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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It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust but to know.
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A 'whim' is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause.
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Creation comes before distribution -- or there will be nothing to distribute.
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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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If you tell an amateur that his story is not good, he always declares indignantly: 'Oh, but it really happened just like this!' The writer who doesn't understand that this is beside the point is not a writer at all.
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Show me your achievement, and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.
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Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality-not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.
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The more propaganda . . . conservatives spread for capitalist economics while at the same time preaching collectivism morally and philosophically , the more nails they’ll drive into capitalism’s coffin.
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The sky is like a black sieve pierced by silver drops that tremble, ready to burst through.
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in architecture, mediocrity is more glaringly obvious than in other lines - because there's a huge, physical object such as a building to demonstrate it.
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Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential.
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Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims.
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It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money.
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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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To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.
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Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.” An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.
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