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Your soul has a single basic function-the act of valuing.

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
Basic
Function
Single
Values
Soul
Valuing
Fountainhead

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Any group or collective, large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members.
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Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through.
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Do not let your fire go out ... Do not let the Hero in your soul perish ... Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
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Money is just a tool. It will take you anywhere you want, but you have to be the driver
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A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.
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Ferris: Are you going to be as impractical as that? Rearden: The evaluation of an action as practical, Dr. Ferris, depends on what it is that one wishes to practice. Ferris: Haven't you always placed your self-interest above all else? Rearden: That is what I am doing right now.
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In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.
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Her face lay still on the air under his face.
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Do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement.
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I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place.
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Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you? He answered, Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one.
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Truth is the recognition of reality reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.
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She knew that she could not have reached this white serenity except as the sum of all the colors, of all the violence she had known.
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Don't think of them now. Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. You're here. It's our time and our life, not theirs. Don't struggle not to be happy. You are. - John Gault
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Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.
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It is a policeman’s duty to retrieve stolen property and return it to its owners. But when robbery becomes the purpose of the law, and the policeman’s duty becomes, not protection, but the plunder of property - then it is an outlaw who has to become a policeman.
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Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work, pride is the result.
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Psychologically, the choice to think or not is the choice to focus or not. Existentially, the choice to focus or not is the choice to be conscious or not. Metaphysically, the choice to be conscious or not is the choice of life or death.
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Self-esteem is reliance on ones power to think.
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Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. Virtue is the act by which one aims and/or keeps it.
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